Why on earth are switchblades still illegal?

I don’t think we’re communicating very effectively so I’ll try to be clear. What incentive does a legislator have to make any attempts to overturn a ban on switchblades? Unless the constituents in my district are clamoring for a repeal, I have no incentive to introduce my own bill or a rider to another bill to repeal the ban on switchblades. Zero. I know I could just put a rider on another bill. You just haven’t given me any reason why I should bother.

For the same reason that you surely advocate a repeal of marijuana laws: moral panics make for bad law, and were you a lawmaker you might actually want to try to do the right thing for a change. Something like that is so under-the-radar as to be insignificant, and so it would be easy indeed to get it done while costing you nothing.

One other advantage to prohibiting switch blades is trace-ability. They’re probably not going to be used for snipping threads whilst mending. So with guns you have at least a chance of finding and matching the hopefully registered weapon when used in a crime.

I’m still unclear about butterfly knives. Say someone owns a butterfly knife that is made so it opens with just a turn, not even flick, of your wrist. Does this person need to get rid of the knife? If so, how?

OK, look at this from a lawmaker’s perspective.

  1. Would supporting changing this law win me any votes? Not many. I might get a few more votes from knife collectors, but that’s it. As has been noted several times already, there doesn’t seem to be any groundswell of support for changing this law.

  2. Would changing this law lose me any votes? Quite possibly. I would not be at all surprised if the average person (if he thought about switchblades at all) would associate switchblades with criminals. That may be an outdated impression, that may not be an accurate impression, but it’s probably still the impression. The last thing a lawmaker wants to do is give his opponent in the next election easy fodder that gets the electorate riled up. “My opponent sponsored a bill to legalize switchblades! He’s soft on crime!”

  3. Even if you have a lawmaker who will view things beyond the next election: will changing this law improve society? I doubt most legislators would see it as a bad law (as you do), or see how legalizing switchblades would make society better.

So - how many drive by knifings were there in the 50’s ?

Folks that are inclined to break laws are not going to care about the laws.

Um…:confused:

You are aware that it is legal to own other types of knives, including combat knives. And in many states it’s legal to carry a knife openly or concealed. Just not a specific type of knife, the switchblade. Also, there is no gun registration in about 99% of the USA.

So, could you please explain your post again and point out why a specific type of knife should be banned when they are no more lethal than all the other types of knives that are legal to own/carry.

I certainly want to do the right thing but I also have to be realistic about what I can actually accomplish. At least when it comes to marijuana (or prostitution even), I can point to solid reasons why I might vote to legalize the two. Unfortunately, I can see no concrete good coming out of legalizing switchblades. To be fair, I don’t see any good reason for them to be illegal. So here’s why I wouldn’t worry about switchblades were I a legislator:

#1. My constituents really don’t care about the issue so I don’t care about the issue.
#2. My political capital is better spent working on other more meaningful issues.

That’s kinda like asking “Recommend me new hat”.

What’s your budget?
What kinda knife are you looking for I.E. a rugged, comfortable to use, utility knife; a “tactical folder” style, combat folder; a refined, easy to carry in your pocket, “gentleman’s” pocket knife which can range from 10’s of for something plain to 1,000's of for something with exotic materials used for both the blade and the handle material.

Basically every major, and many minor, knife manufacturer is making one or more model assisted opener. The differences between the designs are basically a wash, but if they use the exact same mechanism (spring) for both their light thin bladed knives and their heavy thick bladed knives the LTBK is going to open faster than the HTBK.

Ideally you want to go to a real brick and mortar knife dealer to play with different models and brands and find one that opens well and fits your hand and then check online to see if you can get a better price before ya put your cash on the barrelhead.

As much as I love both of my Ken Onion/Kershaw assisted openers (a MiniTask and a special edition Leek with a D2 blade) and assisted opening blades in general, they’re all as slow as molasses compared to any knife with a “Emerson* Wave” on it’s spine (even if it’s a cheap, Chinese, only vaguely, Emerson or his wave knock-off).
A wave spined, (preferably) assisted opening folder will beat any auto/semi-auto from in your pocket to open in your hand every time since attempting to open an auto/semi-auto before it’s clear of the pocket is a reliable way of ensuring it doesn’t open.

*That little hook on the spine of the blade right by the handle scale is Emerson’s “Wave”. If you drag the knife’s blade spine against your pocket opening when you pull it out of your pocket the hook catches on the pocket opening and opens the knife as you’re pulling it out. It’s all the speed of a fixed blade knife in your pocket without any of the risk.

CMC fnord!

I didn’t intend to imply that switchblades weren’t singled out. Heck, the only person I’ve ever hurt, I stabbed with a pencil :wink: And now I see I’ve mixed permit, license and registration. Sheesh…

This is, admittedly, off-topic, but the original thread was locked. (and PK doesn’t have PMs) Pkbites, I just wanted to bring up the arrest of the Tea Party Patriots co-founder in NYC on gun charges.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/northeast/view/20111216tea_party_activist_arrested_at_nyc_airport_on_gun_charge/srvc=home&position=recent

The gentleman in question is a lawyer, and therefore should have been expected to have a full understanding of carry laws in any state he was heading to, I think.

Sadly, he didn’t. That’s pretty much why I was saying your carry idea was a bad one. By all reasonable standards, you appeared to (and it seems to have turned out that you did) have everything covered, but the Mayor has a big hard-on and shit goes wrong.

This is clearly not an ‘I Told You So’, because it worked out fine for you. This is a ‘This Is Why I Said Not To.’

This time, it made the news. Most of the time, it doesn’t. You dig, man?

It was recent but i believe the setting for the movie was the 1970s

Oddly enough, in the book To Sir With Love, a family keeps a switchblade for exactly that reason.

Regards,
Shodan

Not to make more of this than it is, but he had it in a locked box, checked it as required, and there was no evidence that he ever carried it concealed in New York City.

I would hope that we can all admit that given the circumstances his arrest was silly. New York City does not forbid the ownership or possession of handguns, just carry of them. I simply don’t see how this could possibly have run afoul of NYC laws. Well, actually I can, but this is neither the time nor the place for rhetoric.

Actually I did have full understanding of the law. Federal law says I can carry a firearm in all 50 states. All I wanted to know in that thread was a little heads up on how NYC was acting in regards to that law and it turned out it was fine. I just had to have my credentials with me at the airport. It would have been nice if people would have just answered “I don’t know” rather than the shittyness I was hit with. But I got “I don’t know” and shittyness at other websites as well.

The details have been somewhat scant on that guy, but if it turns out like it sounds, he’s a dope. My wife is not a peace officer like myself, but does have a couple CCW permits that allow her to carry in 30+ states. We still need to be educated as to what states those are when we travel. Needless to say, she did not take hers to NYC.

I think it’s just political laziness without a lobby to force the issue. I carry a knife that opens as fast as any switchblade and is perfectly legal. I could pay more money to the the switchblade equivalent but why risk getting caught with something like that.

In the early part of this century, switchblades were marketed directly toward women for precisely this purpose. The idea was that they’d be safer for those poor, silly women who couldn’t handle a real knife.

#13
Old 12-13-2011, 11:19 AM
Czarcasm Czarcasm is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pkbites View Post
I wouldn’t carry a knife as a weapon, but they sure come in handy for a zillion other things. A switchblade would be even more useful.
In what way would a switchblade be even more useful? Outside of having only 2 seconds to cut the red wire(or is it the blue wire?), in what aspect of your life do you need a blade to be available almost instantly?

yeah, because there are no people out there that have limited use of one hand/arm that might want to use a knife for a hobby. my grandfather couldve whittled a flower out of a stick. but if he had limited use of one hand/arm? a pocket knife suddenly becomes A LOT harder to open. and with the gun culture in this country, who cares what kind of knife you might be carrying? a gun is a far greater threat

Wut?

At least in NYC there seems to be some very good reasons for the political class to get behind the decriminalization of switchblades or even “gravity knives”.

See this article http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2014/10/nyc-gravity-knife-law-arrests.php?page=all

From the article: “Law enforcement agencies don’t track gravity-knife crimes as a class, which may explain why the frequency of those arrests has gone largely unreported in the news media. But a Village Voice analysis of data from several sources suggests there have been as many as 60,000 gravity-knife prosecutions over the past decade, and that the rate has more than doubled in that time. If those estimates are correct, it’s enough to place gravity-knife offenses among the top 10 most prosecuted crimes in New York City.”

Police seem to be arresting anyone with a simple pocket knife by erroneously classifying the knife as a gravity knife. Of course many of the people who carry these “weapons” are workmen who use them in their everyday jobs.

The article implies that these arrests are part of what the NYPD uses to make their “stop and frisk” tactics seem more effective at removing “weapons” from the street. Even better if the arrestee has previous convictions and can be “bumped” up to a felony.

Thus far there seems to be support from many constituents to relax these laws so that ordinary pocket knives can’t become illegal but lawmakers have not taken any action.

A variety of states have repealed the law in the last few years, including mine. Yay, one of the only good things from the gop wave of 2010. I can now possess and carry a stiletto knife.