Mechanical Difference Between Assisted Openers and OTF from a Legal Perspective

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rootshot

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Aug 28, 2006
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I know there' a complex set of federal and state laws that fundamentally treat an OTF knife as a "evil" switchblade while generally classifying assisted openers as "good" pocket knives.

In a side opening switchblade a button releases stored mechanical energy to open the blade. This is clearly "evil". In an assisted opener, mechanical energy is exerted on the blade via a stud of flipper which classifies it as "good". An OTF knife seems to mimic the behavior of an assisted opener since there is no stored energy until the slider tensions the spring.

I'm curious why one is broadly legal yet the other is not. Based purely on mechanical principles they should be treated the same....right?
 
Irrational fear and ignorance is my guess. Personally I think that some people's idea of banning stuff that they think is dangerous is a fools errand. But most importantly it is simply wrong to interfere with the right of each person to live their own life for the aforementioned reasons.

Should they be treated the same... no! They are surely different, and that is currently a benefit for us. Should automatic opening knives not be discriminated against? Absolutely. And I say this with basically no interest in carrying one. But why should someone dictate what I can or cannot have? Unless someone is using against someone else in an unjustified way (e.g., threatening), a knife is just that, a cutting tool, regardless of type.
 
rootshot said:
I'm curious why one is broadly legal yet the other is not. Based purely on mechanical principles they should be treated the same....right?
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If you're looking for intelligent, rational, common sense logic and reasoning behind laws prohibiting the ownership or carry of switchblades , I learned a long time ago, you won't find them, because they aren't there.

Many factors that have nothing to do with logic or reason have gone into making such laws. Things like politics, hysteria, racism, ignorance, fear, etc. Things that defy rational explanation.

Knife laws, like the ones that give assisted-opening knives a pass while switchblades are treated like weapons of mass destruction, are a mystery of both politics and human psychology, and it would take a wiser man than I to provide any logical reasoning behind them.
 
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Most weapon restrictions make little to no sense due to the fact that the politicians who write these laws have little to no knowledge of how things work in the real world. Hell, if they ever saw how fast a Wave worked on a knife, they would have a heart attack.
 
The swichblades came first. The folks writing the law looked at them, and gravity knifes etc. and framed the law to ban knives that opened with a button or bolster etc. and ok'd knives that you open by manipulating the blade. Then they all went home for dinner feeling they'd done a fine job.

Then years later a cutler figure out you could have a spring in a knife and have it open by touching the blade. No scary buttons and as a result AOs and flippers flourished.

While that was happening the folks who write laws have found much bigger fish to fry so for the most part knives stayed off the radar.
 
Danke42 said:
The swichblades came first. The folks writing the law looked at them, and gravity knifes etc. and framed the law to ban knives that opened with a button or bolster etc. and ok'd knives that you open by manipulating the blade. Then they all went home for dinner feeling they'd done a fine job.

Then years later a cutler figure out you could have a spring in a knife and have it open by touching the blade. No scary buttons and as a result AOs and flippers flourished.

While that was happening the folks who write laws have found much bigger fish to fry so for the most part knives stayed off the radar.
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One can hope that they stay distracted, or wake up to consider factual information and get rid of these silly laws!
 
Enkrig said:
One can hope that they stay distracted, or wake up to consider factual information and get rid of these silly laws!
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I'm cautiously optimistic that it seems to be moving in that direction. Switchblade laws were always a moral panic kind of thing, but they made a tiny bit more sense when automatics were the only knives that you could open very quickly and reliably. IMO, Spyderco made most of those laws almost totally obsolete 40 years ago and a lot of places are only just now getting around to taking them off the books.
 
tokerblue said:
Once weapon laws on are the books, there is little to no incentive for lawmakers to repeal them.
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That’s usually how it goes. Despite organizations like Knife Rights and AKTI making strides in removing these silly laws at the state and local levels, such efforts really haven’t taken off in other countries. Not to say that may not change in the future, but as of right now the movement, if you call it that, to change these laws is relatively small and in its infancy.
 
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Insipid Moniker said:
I'm cautiously optimistic that it seems to be moving in that direction. Switchblade laws were always a moral panic kind of thing, but they made a tiny bit more sense when automatics were the only knives that you could open very quickly and reliably. IMO, Spyderco made most of those laws almost totally obsolete 40 years ago and a lot of places are only just now getting around to taking them off the books.
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I think most people have seen the utilitarian benefit in having knives that open with one hand. They’re great for handicapped people who have use of only one hand or one arm.
 
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Yep, switchblade laws have been repealed in some states. But I live in California, so I have no such hope. I don't think Kniferights.org is even trying to change California's knife laws (and frankly I don't blame them. spend your resources where you have a chance of success).

Funny, I can walk a few blocks to a pot dispensary, and under CA state law LEGALLY purchase an ounce of pot, which the Feds consider a Level 1 narcotic (same as cocaine and heroin), and get high as a kite, but it would be illegal for someone in this state to sell, or carry a switchblade with a blade 2" or longer.

Like I said, knife laws often defy any sense of rationality.

I don't NEED to carry a switchblade, and even where legal I might not want to, but what bugs me are laws that prohibit me from doing something that has absolutely no effect on anyone else, or poses any threat to society.

But at least we have great weather 🙄 (the only reason I'm still here).
 
AO uses a thumbstud, lever etc, on the blade to open.
OTF and other switchblade-types use a button, or lever etc, on the handle to open. Both seem equally fast, so the distinction is moot. The lawmakers remember the Sharks and Jets from Westside Story.
 
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With assisted openers, the primary considerations seem to have been the concept of “bias to closure” and the fact that they use the blade itself either thumbstud or flipper tab to initiate the opening and not a button.

The law defines a switchblade as a knife that opens automatically

(1) by hand pressure applied to a button or other device in the handle of the knife, or

(2) by operation of inertia, gravity, or both.

As OTF knives require manipulation of a button in the handle of the knife, they fall under the definition.

Note that assisted openers have you either push on the flipper tab or the thumb stud, both of which are located on the Blade not the Handle of the knife, this not meeting the definition.

Some jurisdictions did attempt to rationalize that the thumbstud counted as a button and the button was on the blade and the blade was in the handle and thus the button was in the handle and subject to the law, but most did not do this.

There was one OTF by schrade, I think, that skirted the law by being activated via a tab on the blade, but it made the opening mechanism super awkward.

In 2009 the federal switchblade act was amended to include:

(5) a knife that contains a spring, detent, or other mechanism designed to create a bias toward closure of the blade and that requires exertion applied to the blade by hand, wrist or arm to overcome the bias toward closure to assist in opening the knife.

This was explicitly to protect assisted opening knives. We can probably thank Kershaw and Ken Onion for their marketing their assisted openers as “speed-safe” knives, implying that the bias towards closure was a safety mechanism and that the assist to opening was secondary.
 
killgar said:
Yep, switchblade laws have been repealed in some states. But I live in California, so I have no such hope. I don't think Kniferights.org is even trying to change California's knife laws (and frankly I don't blame them. spend your resources where you have a chance of success).

Funny, I can walk a few blocks to a pot dispensary, and under CA state law LEGALLY purchase an ounce of pot, which the Feds consider a Level 1 narcotic (same as cocaine and heroin), and get high as a kite, but it would be illegal for someone in this state to sell, or carry a switchblade with a blade 2" or longer.

Like I said, knife laws often defy any sense of rationality.

I don't NEED to carry a switchblade, and even where legal I might not want to, but what bugs me are laws that prohibit me from doing something that has absolutely no effect on anyone else, or poses any threat to society.

But at least we have great weather 🙄 (the only reason I'm still here).
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A bit weirdly, cocaine is actually only Schedule 2, as it's used as an ophthalmic anesthetic agent somewhat frequently. Drug scheduling laws are very nearly as outdated as switchblade laws, to be honest, as Schedule 1 drugs supposedly have 'no accepted medical use in the United States' which is no longer true of probably half the things on there.

But I digress. I definitely agree with your take on autos. I have absolutely no need of them, but the same innovations that have made them unnecessary from a practical standpoint have made the laws against them pretty ridiculous.
 
Knife and Gun Regulations/Laws are nothing more than a tool used to infringe and pick away at your rights. And note that they are always cooked up and written into law by the most clueless, ignorant, uninformed imbeciles, who know NOTHING about knives or guns, other than some are scary looking so they must be banned.

I wonder how many of the armed security who protect these lawmaking politicians carry AUTO's.
 
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It’s ridiculous. No hype, I can open a flipper thumb stud or Spyderco hole within milliseconds of that of any auto. Deployment is dictated by how fast you can draw your blade. What’s next ? Only slip joint or back locks are legal. We are governed by old fogies.
 
Also legal in Florida. I wonder if any five O have confiscated a knife and kept it for themselves. I have heard that this happens, but don’t want to believe it.
 
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