This article appeared in Knife Magazine in January 2025
Know Your Knife Laws – Bianchi v Brown – Why It Matters to Knife Folks
By Anthony Sculimbrene, Attorney and Knife Expert
Landmark civil rights cases are always more complex than people think. Brown v. Board of Education was actually a series of cases–one where the notion of separate but equal schools was forever ended and a few other cases dealing with how that idea was implemented and delays that school officials were engaging in to prevent the integration of schools in the South. So, too, with Heller. There are multiple Heller cases. Then there is how Heller applies to the states (MacDonald), then what Heller means for licensing schemes designed to thwart Heller (Bruen), and now we arrive at Bianchi v. Brown. Remember–the arc of the moral universe is long but bends towards justice.
Bianchi v. Brown is interesting to knife folks for two reasons–first, knives play a key role in the Bianchi Court’s analysis, and second, it is the first time the US Supreme Court will have Canjura to contend with (even if it is only in an amicus brief). The gist of the dispute is simple—Maryland passed a law banning assault weapons (with three different categories of weapons that count). Among the banned weapons is the ubiquitous AR-15. The 4th Circuit upheld the law originally but was reversed on appeal at the Supreme Court, and this case is the remand (the reconsideration) opinion.
The Court’s approach here differs to the extreme from the Bruen edict. In Bruen, a law that limits the right to bear arms is presumptively unconstitutional unless the Government can point to a historical analog to the legal ban in question.
First, the Court goes through a very lengthy analysis to show, in its view, that the assault weapons in the Maryland law are part of that very small exception to the Second Amendment in Heller, weapons that are unusual and extremely dangerous. In Heller, the Court listed weapons like the sawed-off shotgun as an exception. The 4th Circuit equates the so-called assault rifles like the AR-15 with the sawed-off shotgun. They engage in a lengthy analysis about how self-defense is at the core of the Second Amendment and how these weapons are more than necessary for self-defense because of their uniquely dangerous nature.
Second, the Court claimed that even if the so-called assault weapons were not unique and dangerous exceptions to the Second Amendment, the law that banned them was similar to historical laws banning other kinds of weapons that exhibited high lethality and significant moral outrage. Here, they reference, among other weapons, bowie knife bans. They rely on ancient case law that places bowie knives in a category of weapons that caught the public’s attention and were the subject of legislation. They then reason that this law is similar to the Maryland law because of the sheer number of incidents endangering public safety involving the so-called assault weapons.
Thus, for the Bianchi Court, the Maryland law survives scrutiny because it bans exceptionally dangerous weapons, AND it has a historical analog. This ruling, if upheld, would essentially undo Bruen as it applies to non-handguns (the Bianchi Court has a strange demarcation of dangerousness between handguns and long guns, seemingly ignoring an entire class of ultra-compact automatic weapons like a Uzi). There is hope, though. First, this is a remand. The 4th Circuit was already reversed on this issue, and the Supreme Court sent the case back to them for reconsider. They didn’t really follow the Bruen analysis on remand. The US Supreme Court is unlikely to look favorably on their approach.
Second, as Canjura shows, the analogy to historical laws needs to be tighter. In Canjura, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts found that automatic knives were legal because they were very similar to pocket knives, which had no historical ban on record. Here, the Bianchi Court basically said that weapon bans dealing with weapons that were subject to moral panics resulting in legislation were sufficiently similar to count as a historical analogy for Maryland’s assault rifle ban. The problem is this ignores all of the Second Amendment jurisprudence since Heller. The Second Amendment can’t be curtailed by moral panics. Instead, it needs to be guided by tight analogies based on physically similar items. Put another way—a ban on bowie knives has nothing to do with a ban on AR-15s, some of the most common items used for self-defense in the US.
Bianchi is the second real attempt since Bruen to evade the Supreme Court. The other occurred in the Hawaiian Supreme Court. How Bianchi is resolved will likely flesh out the Second Amendment for the next decade.
For more information about the court cases referenced in this article, search our website by the title.