Ban on Switchblades Violates Second Amendment: Massachusetts High Court

A 1957 Massachusetts law banning the possession of certain switchblades violates the federal Second Amendment right to bear arms, the highest court in Massachusetts has ruled.

The state court found that switchblades qualify as “arms” under the Second Amendment and the right to possess one is mostly protected by the U.S. Constitution.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reached its conclusion after applying the tests mandated by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen opinion which held that the “central component” of the Second Amendment is the “inherent right of self-defense,” which “guarantee[s] to ‘all Americans’ the right to bear commonly used arms in public subject to certain reasonable, well-defined restrictions.”

The state’s high court also relied upon a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling (Heller) that found that Second Amendment protections apply not just to firearms.

In the Massachusetts case, Boston police officers searched a man while arresting him. During the search, the officers recovered from his waist an orange firearm-shaped knife with a spring-assisted blade. The man, David E. Canjura, was subsequently charged with carrying a dangerous weapon.

Switchblades As ‘Arms’

Canjura conceded the recovered knife met state law’s definition of a “switch knife, or any knife having an automatic spring release device by which the blade is released from the handle.” However, he challenged the constitutionality of the state law banning possession of such a knife. He argued that because a switchblade is an “arm,” the law’s prohibition on carrying a switchblade violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms for self-defense.

A lower court rejected his argument and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court took up the issue, with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts defending its law.

The Second Amendment provides: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The 2022 Bruen ruling requires that courts employ a two-part test to determine whether a regulation or restriction passes constitutional muster under the Second Amendment. First, a court must determine whether the regulated conduct — in this case possession of a switchblade — falls within the scope of the Second Amendment. Canjura argued that a switchblade is a type of folding pocketknife, and law-abiding citizens have possessed folding pocketknives for lawful purposes since the. nation’s founding, including for self- defense. Therefore, notwithstanding its spring-loaded opening mechanism, a switchblade is an “arm” under the Second Amendment.

The Commonwealth contended that knives categorically are not protected by the Second Amendment because the definition of arms is limited to firearms.

The state court found that the Commonwealth was incorrect, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller ruling that the Second Amendment protections apply not just to firearms but to “all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the country’s founding.”

Folding pocketknives not only fit within contemporaneous dictionary definitions of arms — which would encompass a broader category of knives that today includes switchblades — but they also were commonly possessed by law- abiding citizens for lawful purposes around the time of the founding, the Massachusetts court noted in agreeing with Canjura that switchblades are “arms” for Second Amendment purposes.

State’s Burden

Under Bruen, if the court finds as it did here that the regulated conduct is covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment, “the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.” To overcome this presumption that the conduct is protected by the Second Amendment, Bruen then requires that the government demonstrate that its regulation is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of [arms] regulation.”

The state high court said this requires a determination as to whether “a challenged regulation addresses a general societal problem” that has persisted since the 18th Century. If it does, “the lack of distinctly similar historical regulation addressing that problem is relevant evidence that the challenged regulation is inconsistent with the Second Amendment.”

In the Canjura case, the state attempted to meet its burden by pointing to three 19^th Century cases upholding statutory restrictions on certain types of knives, arguing these cases demonstrate a historical tradition of regulating certain knives. But the Massachusetts court was not convinced, finding that the cases involved historical regulations of categorically different types of bladed weapons. Beyond these cases, the Commonwealth did not identify any laws regulating bladed weapons akin to folding pocketknives generally, or switchblades particularly, in place at the time of the founding or ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Commonwealth further argued that most states either banned or severely restricted switchblades in the 1950s and 1960s, making the regulation of switchblades a national tradition. However, the court aid this did not meet the burden of demonstrating a historical tradition justifying the regulation of switchblade knives.

‘Common Use’

The Bruen majority reiterated “the Second Amendment protects only the carrying of weapons that are . . . ‘in common use at the time,'” as opposed to “dangerous and unusual weapons.”

Noting these Bruen qualifications, the Commonwealth contended that Second Amendment protection does not extend to modern switchblades because they are not in “common use” today for self-defense and are “dangerous and unusual” weapons primarily designed for stabbing others. Again the state court disagreed.

The state court concluded that switchblades meet the “common use” test, noting that only seven states and the District of Columbia categorically ban switchblades or other automatic knives, and only two states impose blade length restrictions of less than two inches. “From these facts, we can reasonably infer that switchblades are weapons in common use today by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes; more specifically, we can infer they are ‘widely owned and accepted as a legitimate means of self-defense across the country,'” the opinion states.

As for the “dangerous and unusual” standard, the Massachusetts court concluded that switchblades are not “dangerous and unusual” weapons falling outside the protection of the Second Amendment. “In the most basic sense, all weapons are ‘dangerous’ because they are designed for the purpose of bodily assault or defense,” the court wrote. “As such, general dangerousness of a weapon is irrelevant where the weapon belongs to a class of arms commonly used for self- defense.”

The high court added: “Nothing about the physical qualities of switchblades suggests they are uniquely dangerous” and the Commonwealth did not present any evidence as to why a spring-operated mechanism makes switchblades uniquely dangerous when compared to manual folding pocketknives.