This article appeared in Knife Magazine in December 2024
Know Your Knife Laws – Canjura Redux
By Anthony Sculimbrene, Attorney and Knife Expert
If there were a Christmas tree for knife knuts in 2024, one of the gifts under that tree would be the recently decided Commonwealth v. Canjura. Last month, we looked at the opinion itself. This month, I want to pull out a bit and show why the opinion is so important.
A quick recap: David Canjura was charged with possessing a switchblade and violating Massachusetts state law. The law is very similar to other weapon bans in other states, and it was passed around the time of the Federal Switchblade Act (the Massachusetts law passed in 1957 and the FSA passed in 1958). Canjura challenged his conviction, and the State fought almost every single legal issue in front of Massachusetts’s State Supreme Court known as the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC). The SJC applied Bruen’s two-step analysis and ultimately struck down the state law. That two-step process involves: 1) determining if the Second Amendment covers the item; and 2) determining if the item (or one analogous to it) was subject to a historical ban. If the State fails at both steps, the law is struck down as unconstitutional. In Canjura, the court allowed the State to look at all pocketknife laws to find a historical analog to Massachusetts’s current auto knife ban. Using that lens, the SJC sided with the defendant and struck down Massachusetts’s knife ban law, legalizing the possession and carry of automatic knives in the Commonwealth.
But this opinion holds outsized importance for five critical reasons: 1) the law and reasoning used in striking it down are broadly applicable; 2) the analysis used is of the highest caliber; 3) the court that issued the opinion is very influential; 4) the argument for the State was poorly conceived and helps future litigants navigate issues in knife ban cases; and 5) Massachusetts is likely immune to any sort of legislative action on Second Amendment issues.
Broadly Applicable Case
There are two reasons why Canjura’s holding (the ruling from the case) is broadly applicable. First, the language of Massachusetts’s auto knife ban was very similar to statutes found in other states. So, while a Massachusetts case is not binding or mandatory on laws in other states, given how common the statutory language is, Canjura’s interpretation is more persuasive than it would be otherwise.
Second, and more on this below, the State made a tactical blunder and argued issues that it shouldn’t have. In doing so, it basically argued every possible legal issue a state can when protecting an auto knife ban, and it lost over and over again. So while other states may not choose to defend their knife ban laws the same way, given how many (bad) arguments the Commonwealth made, anyone litigating a knife ban case is likely to find an answer in Canjura.
Impeccable Legal Reasoning
The SJC was faced with a very wide-ranging defense of the knife ban, and yet it systematically took each argument apart. It also chose to draw a very broad field of “historical analogies” for the State, and even then, the State lost. This point is key–under the second step in the Bruen analysis, a state can defend its law by showing a pre-existing ban on a given item or by making an analogy to a ban on a similar item. It does not have to be a one-to-one match. In this case, the SJC permitted the State to analogize automatic knives to a much broader class of knives – “pocket knives”- and, in doing so, gave the State about as wide a field of analogies to use as they could hope to get. And yet, because of the SJC’s detailed analysis (and likely the State’s “pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered” approach), the knife ban was deemed unconstitutional. The SJC could have permissibly narrowed the field of analogies to something much tighter than “pocket knives” in general, but by giving the State such wide latitude, their repudiation of the State’s argument is even stronger than it would be otherwise.
Influential Court
In our system of dual sovereigns (states and the federal government), the federal courts can interpret the US Constitution and laws to apply to the states, but state courts can only interpret their state laws. Put another way, state legal opinions are only binding on lower state courts. No state other than Massachusetts is mandated to follow Canjura. But, state court opinions can be persuasive to other state courts. And when determining what weight to give those out-of-court opinions, the reputation of the other state court matters. And here, the SJC stands as first among equals as far as state courts are concerned.
The SJC and its predecessor legal entity go back to 1692, well before the founding of the US and the US Supreme Court. It has a list of justices and chief justices that contain many outstanding legal scholars, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, who went on to fame on the US Supreme Court. Finally, it has decided some of the most important historical cases in US history:
- Rex v. Preston – the Boston Massacre case with the defense argued by John Adams, Second President of the United States;
- Commonwealth v. Jennison – the first state supreme court case ruling slavery unconstitutional in 1783;
- Commonwealth v. Hunt – the first case to rule that trade unions were legal;
- Goodridge v. Department of Public Health – the first state supreme court case to recognize marriage equality.
Very, very few state supreme courts carry the prestige that the SJC does, especially among progressively minded courts. If any court could give hope to anti-2A groups for pushing back against Bruen, it was the SJC. Instead, they issued a very strong opinion deeming auto knife bans unconstitutional.
Canjura is a Road Map for Future Litigation
Thus far, litigation of knife bans has had a variety of outcomes. The attempt to undo the FSA via litigation in Knife Rights v. Garland was unsuccessful. Canjura shows the way. First, Canjura was a criminal case, and the charge was a possession offense. As a general rule, individuals charged with a possession offense automatically have standing to challenge the possession law. Therefore, it was impossible to have the case thrown out like the court did in Garland. Second, because the charge was a criminal charge, the State has the burden of proof. In a civil suit, like what Garland was, the Plaintiffs, the moving parties, have the burden of proof. Finally, as mentioned above, the Commonwealth’s ham-fisted arguments basically provide an encyclopedia of failure on issues related to knife bans. If there is an argument to make, the Commonwealth made it in Canjura and lost.
No Other Route to Legality
I live in Massachusetts, though I am a lawyer in New Hampshire. In my more than 25 years in the state, it has proven, time and again, to be a bastion of liberal politics. According to Pew Research, Massachusetts is the third most Democrat-leaning state in the US (DC at 73%, Vermont at 57%, and Massachusetts at 56%). Data for the Secretary of State shows that in August of 2024, there are more than 3 times the number of registered Democrats as registered Republicans, and this is the closest it has been at least since 2020. As of 2024, every major state-wide political institution chosen by vote is controlled by Democrats – the governorship, the secretary of state, the attorney general, and both houses of the legislature. Democrats occupy all nine seats in the US House, and both federal Senators are Democrats. Ayanna Pressley is one of the most liberal voices in the House, and she is from Massachusetts. Elizabeth Warren is, in turn, one of the most liberal voices in the Senate, and she is also from Massachusetts. Any way you slice it, Massachusetts is not a place where you will find Second Amendment allies in politics. So, the run of successful nationwide legislative efforts that resulted in the repeal of auto knife bans in all but a handful of states was unlikely to continue in Massachusetts. The only path to legalization was through the courts. As such, Canjura didn’t just change the state from one side of the ledger to another–it did it the only conceivable way possible.
Last year, I wrote about how the great Second Amendment lawyer Dan Lawson saved Christmas a few years ago. This year, it was Kaitlyn Gerber, a line attorney at the Massachusetts Public Defender, known as the Committee for Public Counsel Services or CPCS. All of our constitutional rights deserve protection, and those protectors, in turn, protect us all. In a nation of laws, that is truly a gift.