By Nate Raymond
Oct 22 (Reuters) – A US law that bans the manufacturing of switchblades for sale or distribution across state lines violates the right to keep and bear arms under the US Constitution’s Second Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled.
The New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in a ruling late on Wednesday said a landmark 2022 US Supreme Court decision requiring modern gun restrictions to be consistent with the nation’s history and tradition of arms regulation also applied to bladed weapons covered by the Federal Switchblade Act.
US Circuit Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote in the decision that Congress adopted that law in 1958 during a period of “hysteria” surrounding juvenile delinquency, with the goal of keeping such spring-release pocketknives out of the reach of teenagers. But Elrod said the ban was inconsistent with how the nation at its founding in the 18th century had regulated the use of such weapons.
“Knives have been used for defense throughout human history, including the American founding,” Elrod wrote.
Elrod said switchblades were no exception. Elrod said the US Justice Department, in defending the law in the case, had failed to point to any historical statute similar to the federal ban on switchblades, weapons that she said constitute “arms” that people have a right under the Second Amendment to possess for self-defense.
The three 5th Circuit judges who issued the ruling all were appointed by Republican presidents.
The ruling marked a victory for the advocacy group Knife Rights, which along with five individuals and two firearms retailers had appealed a trial judge’s ruling rejecting a legal challenge to the law they brought in Texas.
Knife Rights said in a statement that the ruling recognized what it has argued for years.
“The Second Amendment protects knives, not just firearms, and that protection extends to commonly possessed automatically opening knives,” it said.
While the 5th Circuit struck down the core part of the Federal Switchblade Act, it concluded that the plaintiffs could not mount a challenge to a separate provision that restricts the manufacturing, sale and possession of the knives in US territories and on tribal land.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
While the department under Republican President Donald Trump has actively challenged numerous gun laws it says violate the Second Amendment, it defended the switchblade law, saying it “fits within the tradition of regulating dangerous and unusual weapons.”
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)
