I may live in Europe, but I work in the courthouse. Today, a package came in and I used my Kershaw ET to open it. TWO judges thought it wise to tell me that I was using an illegal weapon. Of course, knowing the law by heart, I quoted it to them and proved that the knife is well within the legal size limits (maximum allowed length for locking folders is 9cm, the ET is 8.3) and that was that (technically, the ET doesn´t lock, but that discussion would have taken ages).
But it goes to show that many judges have a very negative attitude to knives and a tendency to rule against knife-owners. Remember, these are people I work with every day seeing me use a legal knife while doing my job. And yet they immediately jumped to conclusions.
I have also seen many cases where the prosecution pressed charges for illegal weapons when the knives were clearly legal. Hell, according to our law, Balisongs are legal since the only illegal knives are those with two sharpened edges or locking folders with a blade length over 9cm and you can´t really claim that a bali locks. Yet you can bet your behind that any cop will immediately seize your bali and the courts will uphold that.
So, with that background knowledge, no, this doesn´t surprise me.