The Pennsylvania Legislature has ended the state’s prohibition on automatic knives.
Also known as switchblades, these knives are tucked into the handle until the user presses a button and the blade snaps out.
Just four states now ban the use of switchblades: Washington, Minnesota, Hawaii, and New Mexico.
Pennsylvania law prohibits repairing, selling, dealing, using, or possessing “offensive weapons,” which the law defined as bombs, grenades, machine guns, blackjacks, sandbags, metal knuckles, stun guns (including Tasers), automatic knives, and a few related weapons.
The new law, which takes effect Jan. 2, 2023, was authored by Republican Rep. Martin Causer. It simply removes automatic knives from the list of prohibited offensive weapons.
The bill passed the House in April with 107 Republicans and 85 Democrats voting yes, and just one Republican, Rep. Christopher B. Quinn, voting no. Then on Oct. 26, the Pennsylvania Senate voted unanimously for the change. Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf signed it into law Thursday.
Bipartisan Agreement
This repeal is the culmination of 10 years of advocacy group Knife Rights’ efforts in Pennsylvania, according to Knife Rights Chairman Doug Ritter.“Our mission is to repeal knife bans,” Ritter told The Epoch Times. The organization has been behind 20 repeals of automatic knife bans. “You know, the Second Amendment doesn’t say anything about firearms. Knives are certainly covered. But we’re the only Second Amendment organization that gets support from both sides of the aisle.”
He offers two reasons for bipartisan support. Even though it is a Second Amendment issue, knives are not guns, and allowing people to legally carry them is criminal justice reform, Ritter explained.
“Democrats get this because it’s criminal justice reform and their constituents, as well as Republican constituents, are getting arrested for simply carrying a knife that opens differently than someone in the 1950s thought it should. The reality is, there are lots of kinds of knives that can be opened just as quickly as a switchblade that are perfectly legal.”
How Switchblades Got Banned
The switchblade bans came into being in the 1950s. Before that, there were no bans on switchblades, Ritter said.“They came about because of one crusading journalist,” Ritter said. “It was all about, ‘Oh, these gangs are carrying switchblades.’ It was a made-up story and it made it into movies. West Side Story, for example.” Movies demonized the carrying of switchblade knives, which before then, nobody cared about, he said. “We’ve had switchblade knives in America for over 100 years.”
Ritter traces the bad reputation of switchblades to a news feature in the November 1950 issue of Woman’s Home Companion titled “The Toy that Kills” by Jack Harrison Pollack.
A pocketknife is as important to a growing boy as a lipstick to a young lady, the article said. But the switchblade was replacing the old-fashioned pocketknife, and “its chief purpose—as any crook can tell you—is for committing violence.”
Pollack’s article goes on to make a case for regulating switchblades to make them as hard to buy as a gun, and the 1950 article offered advice for readers to support safer communities.
“If your son has a pocketknife for scouting or fishing, discourage his taking it to school, the movies or other public places. Don’t let him be smart-alecky about it. De-glamorize knife-carrying to him.”
It suggested prosecuting dealers who sell switchblades to minors, and said women should help local law-enforcement round up knives and work for passage of a state law which bans switchblades and controls other dangerous knives.
“It’s just a spring. It is not exotic technology,” Ritter said. “The concept of opening a blade with a spring goes back centuries.”
While many states have repealed switchblade bans, Ritter says, some cities still regulate them. In Philadelphia, for example, knives are banned on public property.
