SAN DIEGO - Switchblade knives are not "arms" protected by the Second Amendment, a California federal judge has ruled in rejecting a legal challenge to a prohibition on them.
Knife Rights Inc. and others filed suit in March 2023 against California Attorney General Rob Bonta and San Diego's sheriff and district attorney, seeking an order declaring certain criminal laws targeting automatically opening knives.
The complaint said knives are arms, which are "weapons of offence, or armor of defence," according to the dictionary. And the Second Amendment's right to bear arms meant California's Knife Ban was unconstitutional, the plaintiffs said.
But San Diego federal judge James Simmons on Aug. 23 disagreed and granted the State's motion for summary judgment. His ruling upholds the ban on switchblades with blade lengths at least two inches long and finds they are "dangerous and unusual" under a test established by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision known as Bruen.
Neither side directly addressed whether the knives are unusual for self-defense, Simmons said.
"Plaintiffs seemingly touch on whether the weapons are unusual, by arguing that the weapons are widely used for lawful purposes," he wrote.
"But Plaintiffs never come close to arguing whether the weapons are specifically unusual for self-defense. Defendants, in a roundabout way, appear to address whether the regulated switchblades are unusual by contending that they necessitate close hand-to-hand combat training to be used for self-defense and such encounters create psychological barriers.
"Because Plaintiffs bear the burden of satisfying Bruen step one and fail to prove that the regulated switchblades are in common use today for self-defense or that the weapons are not dangerous and unusual, it follows that there is no genuine dispute of material fact as to this issue."
Knife Rights obviously found fault with Simmons' ruling, arguing there's no mention of "self-defense" or "in common use" in the Second Amendment.
"To call the Court's decision irrational and ludicrous is being nice. And, that's not at all bad for us," the group said on its website.
An appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is coming, with Knife Rights calling that development "inevitable and expected." It added, "We plan for that because that's where the real battle is fought."
Simmons' ruling was so flawed it gave the group plenty to appeal, Knife Rights says.
"The Court's extremely flawed opinion, which has added new language and conditions to the plain text of the Second Amendment, sets us up for a strong appeal," it added.
Simmons also used factors established in the Heller case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court found regulations on gun ownership in the District of Columbia were unconstitutional. Bruen was a similar case from New York and, in fact, most of the cases cited in Simmons' ruling involved gun bans.
Important to Knife Rights' case could be United States v. Duarte, which was decided by the Ninth Circuit in May. A non-violent offender - Steven Duarte - served his time in prison and reentered society but was charged with violating a federal law banning people who spent more than one year in prison from possessing a firearm.
A split three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit found this violated the Second Amendment, but that ruling has been vacated, as the case will now be heard by the entire roster of Ninth Circuit judges.
California's Knife Ban has been on the books since 1957. Knife Rights said in its lawsuit that at least 42 states as of 2023 allowed possession of the knives California has banned, with 32 permitting the public to carry them.