What’s up with switchblade knife legislation?

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LAS VEGAS — There’s a new piece of legislation in Olympia aimed at defining a “switchblade” knife that contains what appears to be a contradictory, or at least confusing, definition that has some Second Amendment activists puzzled.

This column will have a chance to speak to several of them during the next four days here at the annual Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show. They’re knife makers, whose wares will be just as much on display as new guns and other gear.

Senate Bill 6179 says this about switchblades:

"Switchblade knife" means any knife with a blade that is automatically released by a spring mechanism or other mechanical device, or any knife having a blade which opens, or falls, or is ejected into position by the force of gravity, or by an outward, downward, or centrifugal thrust or movement. A knife that contains a spring, detent, or other mechanism designed to create a bias toward closure of the blade and that requires physical exertion applied to the blade by hand, wrist, or arm to overcome the bias toward closure to assist in opening the knife is not a switchblade knife.

Presumably, this means that knives from various Oregon-based manufacturers that are generically called “assisted opening” knives do not fall under the switchblade umbrella. But at the top of the previous paragraph, we have knives with blades that are automatically released by a spring mechanism or other mechanical device, being called switchblades. Then knives that contain springs, detents or “other” mechanisms are not switchblades.

Perhaps the part of this legislation that makes it bad is that it exempts law enforcement, firefighters and military personnel while on the job.

What makes these folks special? Why should a police officer be allowed to possess a type of arm (the Second Amendment doesn’t specify guns or other weapons that people have a right to bear, it just says “arms” and neither does Article 1, Section 24 of the State Constitution) that any other citizen cannot?

When we were children, it was not unusual to have a pocketknife, even at school. My how times have changed. Today, they throw you out and even prosecute you. Oh, the horror that some teenager might have a Boy Scout or Swiss Army knife.

Knives are tools, and they are “arms” in any kind of definition. Just ask Doug Ritter, chairman of Knife Rights, Inc. We will be looking for Ritter this week, probably chatting with Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Bellevue-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Many believe there should be no restrictions on the types of knives people can own and regularly carry, provided they are not carried or used in a criminal manner; that is, to commit a crime or to deliberately harm another person, other than in self-defense. This means that switchblades and gravity blade knives would be legal.

That could become an issue with a Whatcom County case presently unfolding. One man was stabbed fatally up there during an alleged gang fight, and the Seattle Times is reporting that the Whatcom County sheriff believes the stabbing was in self-defense.

SB 6179 could be in for heightened attention. Knife advocates need to watch it closely, especially those who believe a knife is a knife is a knife, no matter how it opens.

To paraphrase Alan Ladd in the classic Shane, “A knife is a tool. No different than an axe or a shovel. A knife is only as good or as bad as the man using it.

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