Good lord, don't get me started. Oops, too late.
The banning of switchblades was a moronic, knee-jerk piece of legislation from 1950s (the federal law only regulates inter-state sale, but most states made copycat phrased laws banning carry and sometimes even ownership). It was based on emotion and spurious evidence, not any kind of rational consideration. Simply put, fixed blade is always faster than an auto hands down. It's already open! Switchblades were invented for people on boats so they could cut lines while clinging to the rigging with one hand, not killing people.
But the problem is once you put a law in place, it can be hard to get it removed, especially federal laws.
It seems to be that assisted opening knives were designed specifically with the idea of exploiting loopholes in the legal phrasing of switchblade law. Why was the law not amended to cover them too? My hypothesis is legislators deep down kind of know the switchblade bans are stupid, and therefore have decided not to bother changing the law to be more restrictive. Especially since guns are a bigger hot-button issue in the modern day since the 1980s.
However, I will continue to campaign by whatever means available for the repeal of
U.S.C. Title 15, Chapter 29 in it's entirety, along with all its state-specific bastard children.
I got away from myself a bit there. Hope I didn't step on anyone's toes.
