Knife Rights Isn’t Just for Firearms

Knife Rights has filed its Appellants’ Reply Brief in our challenge to the constitutionality of the Federal Switchblade Act under the Second Amendment (except for the import ban). The Department of Justice’s embarrassingly absurd Response Brief laid itself wide open to attack, and attack we did, slicing and dicing, leaving its bloody carcass on the courthouse steps.
The DOJ almost entirely abandoned any opposition to Plaintiffs’ standing and also rejected the district court’s outrageous ruling that the FSA doesn’t serve as a “de facto prohibition on possession” of switchblade knives. The DOJ conceded that the FSA “generally prohibits the interstate sale of . . . switchblades altogether,” and therefore, “operates more like “a complete ban of” one of the “most common ways to acquire switchblades.” They were just about there before they went off the rails…again.
The DOJ conceded switchblades are “arms,” but claimed they are not protected because they are “concealable.” Heller and Bruen both made clear that this doesn’t invalidate the constitutional right, otherwise Heller would have been decided differently. Nor does DOJ’s inane claim that switchblades are “uniquely adapted for criminal misuse,” withstand scrutiny. As the Reply Brief makes clear, even if “criminal misuse” were true (and it is not), that is not the question. Any “arm” may be criminally misused. The question, settled by Heller, is whether they are in common use by the law-abiding. Criminal misuse is not relevant, period.
First and foremost, the brief makes clear that under Heller and Bruen, if switchblades are arms “commonly used for lawful purposes,” which the DOJ does not contest, then the argument is over… they are protected under the Second Amendment and the FSA’s ban is unconstitutional. The remaining policy arguments offered by the DOJ are irrelevant noise that cannot be considered under Heller and Bruen. Read more








