This article appeared in Knife Magazine in February 2025
Know Your Knife Laws – The Bowie Knife Exception
By Anthony Sculimbrene, Attorney and Knife Expert
One particularly fascinating glitch in Second Amendment jurisprudence surrounds one of the most iconic patterns in all of knives – the bowie knife. There are countless articles, books, and videos online recounting the history of the bowie knife and why it is so famous, but to my knowledge, there is nothing that delves into why the bowie knife, among all other knives, stands out in a legal context as, almost certainly, beyond the protections of the Second Amendment. If this seems strange, given that most states agree that Bruen protects automatic knives, once seen as the height of dangerousness, it is important to remember that Bruen is, at the end of the day, a legal test designed to capture the mindset of historical figures. Simply put, if they thought it was scary, it is probably going to be illegal.
Let’s start at the beginning. For nearly two centuries, the Second Amendment was not a place of active jurisprudence. Then, in District of Columbia v. Heller, The US Supreme Court changed that and announced, for the first time, that the Second Amendment confers upon individuals a right to bear arms. That right was extended, or in more precise legal language, incorporated, to all the states in McDonald v. City of Chicago. The test for this individual right to bear arms was articulated in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.
The Bruen standard has two steps, with a special addendum, where we find the bowie knife. First, courts must determine if a statute infringes on the right to bear arms. If it does, the statute is presumed to be invalid. The government an overcome this presumption by showing that the statute had a historical analog. However, this analysis does not apply to bans on weapons that are dangerous and unusual. Where the line is between regular arms and those that are “dangerous and unusual” is hard to say. Courts have struggled with this concept since it was articulated in Heller.
Typically, the dangerous and unusual exception focuses on two things: 1) a list of enumerated items and 2) the commonality between the items and their capacity to cause mass death. But when you look at the list of items typically cited as “dangerous and unusual,” you find the oft-maligned sawed-off shotgun, Gatling-style cannons, grenades, and, strangely, a bowie knife. In virtually every formulation of the “dangerous and unusual” items, the bowie knife appears. In a recent case, United States v. Torres Diaz, the court found that large capacity magazines were “dangerous and unusual” because, like sawed-off shotguns, M16s, and bowie knives, they were capable of causing “the murder of dozens.”
Perhaps it’s because of my fondness for knives, but I can’t think of a single instance in which a bowie knife, or any knife for that matter, caused the murder of dozens. But because of the Bruen test, and in fact, all of Second Amendment jurisprudence, is ultimately a calcification of historical beliefs, we will occasionally get weird outcomes whereby bowie knives have the same legal status as highly lethal items. The fact that there is some evidence that the bowie knife was not much different than modern kitchen knives demonstrates how silly historical logic tests can be. When this is coupled with the fact that none or almost none of the bans on bowie knives are still on the books nationwide, the bowie knife’s inclusion in the “dangerous and unusual” exemption to the Second Amendment is even sillier.
Ultimately, bowie knives are not per se protected by the Second Amendment because, at the time many weapon bans were being enacted, the bowie knife was a legal boogeyman – something with a reputation it did not warrant. It is categorically different from the other items, being the only non-projectile weapon even included in the list. Additionally, it is significantly less dangerous than other bladed weapons like, say, a cruciform bayonet that is designed to make wounds that resist suturing. That said, these differences don’t matter in a legal test based on historical analysis. Perhaps the bowie knife should serve as a symbol – public panic-based weapons bans rarely result in rational, long-lasting laws.