If You Care about Guns, You Should Care about Knives, Too

W hen we talk about the Second Amendment today, we’re usually debating gun-control laws. Americans aren’t talking much about knives, but we should be.

The Second Amendment is not limited to guns — it includes all “Arms.” In fact, the Founders were well aware that, for the majority of human history, bows and bladed weapons had been the most commonly owned types of arms. Even in our nation’s early days, when rifles and eventually pistols became more common, bladed weapons remained widespread. Bayonets, swords, and hatchets were often required for militia service, and the first forms of arms control targeted them and other bladed weapons.

Why should we care about any of this today? Because precedent is shifting.

The entirety of the “gun control” movement is really an “arms control” movement. This movement has always focused on unpopular weapons, since banning or limiting their use was least likely to meet with legal or political resistance.

Initially, the open carriage of arms — including Bowie knives, swords, and dirks — “to the terror” of the public was prohibited. These laws had their roots in the English common-law tradition, and in our early republic. In the mid-19th century, the state of Georgia became the first to try completely banning possession of certain bladed weapons. That attempt was quickly struck down by the state supreme court. A century later, more states began implementing total bans on specific arms that politicians and the public associated with criminals.

That’s how we arrived at the knife bans many states have today, which often cover switchblades and butterfly knives. There is no question that these knives are inherently less dangerous than guns. And yet they are completely banned in a number of jurisdictions, from Hawaii to New Jersey.

Due to a lot of bad action movies, a lack of public understanding, and a media campaign surrounding juvenile delinquency, politicians were able to pass complete bans and Draconian restrictions on many different types of knives at both the state and federal levels.

Thankfully, much as modern efforts to ban or limit gun ownership have spawned a potent, organized political backlash, people and politicians are starting to come to their senses about knife bans. A number of states have already repealed their antiquated switchblade bans, as Colorado did in 2017. Other bans were successfully challenged in court. Some states have already repealed their bans on butterfly knives, and Hawaii’s ban is currently the subject of a lawsuit. We at the Mountain States Legal Foundation have filed a brief in that case, Teter v. Connors, arguing that Hawaii’s ban violates the Second Amendment and is thus unconstitutional.

It is clear from Founding Era primary sources that bladed weapons, and their modern analogues — such as butterfly knives — are protected “Arms” under the Second Amendment. Yet Hawaii’s law completely prohibits individuals from selling, possessing, or owning them.

It is imperative that courts recognize the broad definition of arms that the Framers intended. But this case has added importance, because the Ninth Circuit, where it will be heard, has demonstrated a recent shift toward upholding individuals’ natural, fundamental, constitutionally protected rights. Historically, the Ninth Circuit has rarely looked to the original meaning of the Second Amendment to decide such cases. In the past year, however, two Ninth Circuit panels have ruled in favor of gun rights in Young v. Hawaii and Duncan v. Becerra, with both decisions including historical analysis of the right to keep and bear Arms.

A win in Teter would continue this monumental shift in the Ninth Circuit’s jurisprudence. It would also demonstrate the constitutional basis for the gun-rights movement, and signal to the rest of the nation that the ideas Second Amendment defenders are putting forward are legally superior. Once the courts recognize that the term “Arms” was meant to encompass a wide variety of weapons and defensive items, including knives, we will be well on our way to an appropriately broad Second Amendment jurisprudence. A win for knives will be a win for all arms.