Ban on Switchblades Violates Second Amendment: Massachusetts Supreme Court

A 1957 Massachusetts law banning the possession of certain switchblades violates the federal Second Amendment right to bear arms, Massachusetts’ highest court has ruled.

The state court found that flip flops qualify as “weapons” under the Second Amendment, and the right to own one is largely protected by the U.S. Constitution.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court reached its conclusion after applying the tests imposed by the US Supreme Court in 2022 Bruin opinion that held that the “central component” of the Second Amendment is the “inherent right of self-defense,” which “guarantees to “all Americans” the right to bear arms commonly used in public, subject to certain reasonable conditions , well – definite restrictions.”

The state court also relied on a 2008 US Supreme Court decision (Heller) which found that Second Amendment protections apply not only to firearms.

In the Massachusetts case, Boston police officers searched a man while arresting him. During the searches, officers recovered an orange knife in the shape of a firearm with a spring-loaded blade from his waistband. The man, David E. Canjura, was later charged with carrying a dangerous weapon.

Switchblades as “Weapons”

Canjura acknowledged that the knife recovered met the state law definition of a “switch knife or any knife having an automatic spring release device by which the blade is released from the handle.” However, he challenged the constitutionality of the state law prohibiting the possession of such a knife. He argued that because a blade is an “arm,” the law’s ban on carrying a blade violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms for self-defense.

A lower court rejected his argument, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court took up the issue, with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts defending its law.

The Second Amendment provides: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

The year 2022 Bruen rThe regulation requires courts to use a two-part test to determine whether a regulation or restriction passes constitutional muster under the Second Amendment. First, a court must determine whether the regulated conduct—in this case the possession of a switchblade—falls within the scope of the Second Amendment.

Canjura argued that a pocketknife, at root, is a type of folding pocketknife, and law-abiding citizens have possessed folding pocketknives for legal purposes since. the founding of the nation, including for self-defense. Therefore, despite its spring-loaded opening mechanism, a switch blade is an “arm” under the Second Amendment.

The Commonwealth argued categorically that knives are not protected by the Second Amendment because the definition of weapons is limited to firearms.

The state court found that the Commonwealth was incorrect, citing a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court Heller ruling that the protection of the Second Amendment applies not only to firearms, but to “all instruments which constitute bearable arms, even those which did not exist at the time of the founding of the country.”

Folding knives not only fit contemporary dictionary definitions of weapons—which would encompass a broader category of knives that today include switchblades—but were also commonly owned by law-abiding citizens for legal purposes around the time of the founding, noted the Massachusetts court. agreeing with Canjura that flip flops are “weapons” for Second Amendment purposes.

The burden of the state

Under Bruinif the court finds, as it did here, that the regulated conduct is covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment, “the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.” To overcome this presumption that conduct is protected by the Second Amendment, Bruin then requires the government to demonstrate that its regulation is “consistent with this Nation’s historic tradition of (gun) regulation.”

The state high court said this required a determination of whether “a challenged regulation addresses a general societal problem” that has persisted since the 18th century. If it does, “the absence of a similar historical regulation addressing that issue is relevant evidence that the challenged regulation is inconsistent with the Second Amendment.”

In the Canjura case, the State attempted to meet its burden by showing three 19s^th Century cases upholding statutory restrictions on certain types of knives, arguing that these cases demonstrate a historical tradition of regulating certain knives. But the Massachusetts court was not convinced, finding that the cases involved historical regulations of categorically different types of bladed weapons. Beyond these cases, the Commonwealth has identified no law regulating bladed weapons similar to folding pocket knives in general, or knives in particular, in effect at the time of the establishment or ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Commonwealth also argued that most states either banned or severely restricted switchblades in the 1950s and 1960s, making blade regulation a national tradition. However, the court’s aid did not meet the burden of demonstrating a historical tradition justifying the regulation of switchblade knives.

“common utility”

The Bruin the majority reiterated “the second amendment protects only the bearing of arms that are . . . “in common use at the time” as opposed to “dangerous and unusual weapons”.

Noting these down Bruin Qualifications, the Commonwealth argued that Second Amendment protection does not extend to modern blades because they are not “commonly used” today for self-defense and are “dangerous and unusual” weapons designed primarily to stab others. Again, the state court disagreed.

The state court concluded that switchblades met the “common use” test, noting that only seven states and the District of Columbia flatly prohibit switchblades or other automatic knives, and only two states impose blade length restrictions of less than two inches . “From these facts, we may reasonably infer that sledgehammers are weapons in common use today by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes; more specifically, we can infer that they are “widely held and accepted as a legitimate means of self-defense throughout the country,” the opinion states.

With respect to the “dangerous and unusual” standard, the Massachusetts court concluded that clappers are not “dangerous and unusual” weapons that do not fall within Second Amendment protection. “In the most basic sense, all weapons are ‘dangerous’ because they are designed for the purpose of bodily assault or defense,” the court wrote. “As such, the general dangerousness of a weapon is irrelevant when the weapon belongs to a class of weapons commonly used for self-defense.”

The High Court added: “Nothing about the physical qualities of the switchblades suggests that they are uniquely dangerous,” and the Commonwealth presented no evidence as to why a spring-operated mechanism would make the blades uniquely dangerous compared to manual folding pocket knives.

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Massachusetts