The proverbial ship was righted a few weeks ago after the California Court of Appeals reversed an overreaching ruling from a lower court that deemed any knife that could be flicked open with a wrist a switchblade.
According to Knife Rights, “the lower court made the faulty ruling despite an explicit provision in California law that distinguishes and protects one-hand opening and assisted-opening knives with a bias towards closure and despite prior Appellate Court rulings upholding that exception.”
What that lower court in California was saying was that the 80 percent of the knives sold in the United States are illegal.
Fortunately for knife carriers throughout California, the judges in the higher court reversed that expansive ruling and brought things back to the status quo. Here’s an excerpt from the judge’s opinion:
“Switchblade knife” does not include a knife that opens with one hand utilizing thumb pressure applied solely to the blade of the knife or a thumb stud attached to the blade, provided that the knife has a detent or other mechanism that provides resistance that must be overcome in opening the blade, or that biases the blade back toward its closed position.
This goes to show that many people who carry the oft-demonized tool are subject to the whims of people who do not know a lot about the mechanism of knives. That’s why Knife Rights and similar organizations exist.
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