This article appeared in Knife Magazine in November 2024.
Know Your Knife Laws – Automatic Knives No Longer Illegal in Massachusetts – Commonwealth v. Canjura
By Anthony Sculimbrene, Attorney and Knife Expert
Ground-breaking news that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled on August 27, 2024, that the State’s nearly 70-year-old ban on automatic knives violated the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
The important case Commonwealth v. Canjura from the very liberal State of Massachusetts follows less than four months after Knife Rights v. Garland, which was a significant setback for knife owners. The federal district court, in that case, ducked the issue of whether Bruen * invalidated the Federal Switchblade Act. Canjura deals with the exact conflict raised in Knife Rights v. Garland, this time from a state law perspective, and resolves the legal conflict in favor of knife owners. Canjura is important for two reasons: 1) it is a win for knife owners that would be impossible in the state legislature, and 2) the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is often a leading indicator on major legal issues. Second Amendment advocates should also pay special attention to Canjura because it shows a more reliable path forward than the approach taken in Knife Rights–here, public defenders from Massachusetts spearheaded the effort. This is the same organization that got Caetano to the U.S. Supreme Court.
One person deserves a special shout-out here–Kaitlyn Gerber, Canjura’s lawyer. Attorney Gerber is an excellent lawyer, one I know personally, and one, as evidenced by this case, is willing to take every legal step necessary to protect her client. Her strategy here was impeccable–conceding irrelevant issues, yet preserving the constitutionally significant ones (and she got a great resolution for her client, to boot). Notably, she did exactly what her predecessor did in Caetano. Sometimes, the best lawyer is the one money CAN’T buy. Congratulations Kaitlyn!
In this case, Canjura and his significant other got into a fight. When the police arrived, they searched Canjura and discovered that he had a folding pocket knife with a spring opening. Canjura was charged with “carrying a dangerous weapon” in violation of MGL 269 sec. 10(b), a 1957 law (the Federal Switchblade Act was passed less than a year later). This law prohibits possessing a “switch knife, or any knife having an automatic spring release device by which the blade is released from the handle.”
The Commonwealth made a series of especially bad arguments, all of which the Supreme Judicial Court (“SJC”) knocked down quickly. First, they claimed that the Second Amendment and Bruen only protected firearms. The Court noted that “…[w]hile both Heller and Bruen involved handguns, Second Amendment protections subsumed more than just firearms.” In rejecting this truly silly argument, the SJC conducted perhaps the most thorough analysis of the history of carrying pocket knives in the entire country. They noted that while swords were common initially in the U.S., pocket knives overtook them in popularity as time went on until they reached a point when they were almost a universally carried item. The SJC also noted that while knives were used in self-defense, they also served important roles in providing food and in fashioning articles from raw materials.
Having determined that they were arms, the Court then turned to whether or not switchblades were subject to historical prohibitions. The SJC noted that the government can prevail by showing a law that prohibits the exact item or a historical twin. Here, the SJC did something that no other court has done so far – it determined what exactly counts as a “historical twin” for switchblades. In Canjura, the Court held that the government could use laws targeting switchblades or pocket knives in general. The Commonwealth found three laws, all of which the SJC rejected categorically, noting that none of them dealt with either switchblades or pocket knives. The SJC noted that while other cases allowed for broader historical twin legislation, they were not doing so because the kinds of knives that were targeted were too dissimilar to pocket knives in general and switchblades specifically.
The Commonwealth had one last argument – namely that switchblades were weapons that were not in common use and were dangerous and unusual (this is the part of Heller/Bruen that dealt with things like sawed-off shotguns being prohibited). Here, the Court noted that switchblades were in common use because only seven states and D.C. still have laws prohibiting them. They also found that they were not dangerous and unusual, noting that all weapons are dangerous but that switchblades were not “uniquely dangerous,” that is, their level of dangerousness is disproportionate to their utility in self-defense roles.
The Court also foreclosed the possibility that the Commonwealth could tweak its arguments, denying a request to remand for a further brief. Basically, they told the government that there is nothing you can say to change our minds, so don’t bother with an additional briefing.
With that, the Supreme Judicial Court struck down Massachusetts’ switchblade law, a law that had almost zero chance of being repealed, given the state’s legislative makeup. It also gave us an analysis template for future litigation on this issue. This is a good day to live in Massachusetts. Given this case’s ruling, I think the days of the Federal Switchblade Act are numbered. The question is: How big is that number?
Hopefully, the Federal Switchblade Act will soon be history, thanks to the American Knife & Tool Institute (AKTI) and its partners. In 2017, AKTI began an initiative to repeal the Federal Switchblade Act, introducing the Freedom of Commerce Act that session and again in 2019. We continue to work with legislative supporters for its passage.
*See previous articles in Knife Magazine or visit “Know Your Knife Laws.”