After being banned for nearly seven decades, Massachusetts residents can now carry switchblades, thanks to the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
On Tuesday, the Commonwealth’s Judicial Court, the highest court in the state, ruled that switchblades fall under the same Second Amendment protection as firearms do and cannot be banned by the state.
In the ruling concerning the law passed by the state legislature in 1967, Justice Serge Georges Jr. wrote: “Nothing about the physical qualities of switchblades suggests they are uniquely dangerous. Therefore, the carrying of switchblades is presumptively protected by the plain text of the Second Amendment.”
The case, Commonwealth v. Sanjura, involved the 2020 arrest of a man during a domestic dispute. David Sanjura had a spring-assisted knife in his possession, and prosecutors charged him with carrying a dangerous weapon. He was convicted, but later appealed the conviction on Second Amendment grounds.
The commonwealth argued before the court that the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to knives, only firearms. But the high court disagreed.
“The Commonwealth is incorrect,” the ruling started. “As discussed above, the Second Amendment extends to all bearable arms and is not limited to firearms.”
The court also considered the second Bruen standard—whether there were restrictions on such knives at the time of the nation’s founding—in making its ruling.
“In short, folding pocket knives not only fit within contemporaneous dictionary definitions of arms—which would encompass a broader category of knives that today includes switchblades—but they also were commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes around the time of the founding.”
The court also took issue with the commonwealth’s definition of switchblade knives being “dangerous.”
“In the most basic sense, all weapons are ‘dangerous’ because they are designed for the purpose of bodily assault or defense,” the ruling stated. “As such, general dangerousness of a weapon is irrelevant where the weapon belongs to a class of arms commonly used for self-defense.”
Lastly, the court cited the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller ruling, which stated that Americans have the right to own firearms for self-defense.
“While both Heller and Bruen involved handguns, Second Amendment protections subsume more than just firearms,” Tuesday’s ruling stated. “Indeed, [according to Heller] ‘the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.’”
Of course, power-hungry bureaucrats in the commonwealth were not thrilled with the court’s decision. More likely to side with “common sense” than the actual U.S. Constitution, Massachusetts’ attorney general quickly voiced her displeasure.
“This case demonstrates the difficult position that the Supreme Court has put our state courts in with the Bruen decision, and I’m disappointed in today’s result,” AG Andrea Joy Campbell said in a statement after the ruling. “The fact is that switchblade knives are dangerous weapons and the Legislature made a commonsense decision to pass a law prohibiting people from carrying them.”
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