Category: Legal Issues (page 3 of 5)

Knife Right’s massive fundraising event called the Ultimate Steel Spectacular is back and — well — it’s spectacular.

Every year Knife Rights launches its Ultimate Steel campaign to raise money because fighting for your right to carry knives doesn’t come cheap.

This year, the knife-advocacy organization has more than $200,000 worth of prizes to give away to those who donate to the cause.

Here’s how it works: You pick one of 10 donation amounts and receive entries based on the amount. For $20, you get one entry. For $60, you get four entries as well as a free bonus entry. As you get to higher amounts, you also get some nice add-ons. For example, at the $300 mark, you get 37 entries (including 22 free entries) and a free Colonial Nemesis, which is valued at $200. Those are available in limited quantities.

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Just because nothing is getting done in Washington D.C. doesn’t mean nothing ever gets done in politics.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper signed a bill into law yesterday that repeals the state’s switchblade and gravity knife ban thanks to some great work from Knife Rights.

The repeal essentially removes the language related to switchblades and gravity knives from the codes defining dangerous or illegal weapons.

It completely removes the following two passages from Title 18. Criminal Code,  Article 12. Offenses Relating to Firearms and Weapons,  Part 1. Firearms and Weapons – General:

(e) “Gravity knife” means any knife that has a blade released from the handle or sheath thereof by the force of gravity or the application of centrifugal force.
…
(j) “Switchblade knife” means any knife, the blade of which opens automatically by hand pressure applied to a button, spring, or other device in its handle.

It also eliminates gravity and switchblade knives from the section on possessing a dangerous or illegal weapon.

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It’s been a long time in the making, but 2017 may be the year the increasingly irrelevant 1958 Federal Switchblade Act finally gets repealed.

We’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves, though.

The Knife Owners’ Protection Act of 2017 — originally conceived and authored by the great Knife Rights in 2010 — has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Andy Biggs. The act, known by its acronym KOPA, now includes language that repeals the federal switchblade ban.

“The Federal Switchblade Act was an asinine idea when it was passed in 1958 in a wave of Hollywood-inspired politically motivated hysteria and has only become more irrelevant as time has passed,” said Knife Rights Chairman Doug Ritter in a statement. “The majority of states have always allowed switchblade possession and with Knife Rights’ repeal of switchblade bans in 11 states in the past seven years, fully four-fifths of the states now allow switchblade possession to one degree or another.”

I’ve written on this very blog countless times why it’s time for the switchblade ban to be repealed. Not only has it affected the business of companies like Knife Depot (which can’t sell automatic knives except to government, law enforcement, or military personnel) but it makes traveling from state to state with different regulations extremely complicated.

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In a huge blow to the knife community and civil rights in general, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo vetoed a bill that would have reformed an antiquated knife law that has resulted in thousands of capricious arrests.

We’ve been following this story closely ever since a Village Voice investigation found that as many as 60,000 people were arrested for illegal gravity knives between 2003 and 2013, with more than 80 percent being black or Hispanic.

The current gravity knife laws are poorly written and open to interpretation from individual officers. People who buy knives legally at stores in the New York area have been arrested for carrying a supposedly illegal knife. With some effort, New York police officers can argue nearly any folder is a gravity knife.

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Thanks to a distorted reading of New York City knife laws, the NYPD has sent as many as 60,000 people to jail over the past decade. According to the Village Voice, simple possession of a pocket knife has even landed defendants in prison for up to seven years.

Knife Rights has been taking on the city for the past few years, arguing that the laws are unjust, capricious, and unconstitutional. In some cases, people have been arrested for carrying legal knives like the Buck 112 Ranger or Leatherman Surge—not exactly gravity knives.

Now the organization has garnered support from a group traditionally on the other side of the political spectrum: the NAACP.

These two groups make strange bedfellows, but they are fighting for the same thing: justice for unfairly targeted groups.

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Few organizations have done more for knife rights than Knife Rights.

The advocacy organization is dedicated to influencing positive public policy in pursuit of knife rights, encourage the safe use and marketing of knives, and provide knife owners with services.

To say that Knife Rights is a success is not doing the organization justice. Knife Rights Founder and Chairman Doug Ritter has taken on NYC for its anti-knife laws and pushed pro-knife laws around the United States. Here’s an interview we did with Ritter back in 2011 to learn more about the early days of the movement.

While the organization has done so much for knife owners, there’s still a long way to go. Unfortunately, pushing through legislation and fighting legal battles doesn’t come cheap.

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Say you’re walking down the street and you’re carrying a Spyderco Tenacious clipped to your pocket. It may look a little something like this:

If a police officer were to see the knife clip attached to your pocket, would it be considered concealed carry or open carry?

In short, it could be considered either. One of the problems with knife laws is the fact that much of it is left up to interpretation. One police officer may only see the clip and say that the actual knife is concealed in the pocket. Another may say that it’s clearly a part of the knife and it’s showing so the knife is being openly carried.

It matters because in some places, a knife with a blade length more than a certain amount of inches cannot be carried openly. In other places, that same knife must be carried openly.

Wherever you live (and wherever you go), it’s absolutely essential to thoroughly look at your knife laws because they are often littered with phrases and definitions that are general or open to interpretation.

For example, in New York City, knives must be carried concealed. Since the Big Apple is well known for interpreting knife laws very broadly, Knife Rights recommends that knives are never carried clipped to your pocket or you may be arrested, even those with a deep-pocket-carry clip that doesn’t actually show the knife’s body.

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We all know there’s little love between knife manufacturers. When you are trying to make a knife stronger, better,  and more interesting than a competitor, there’s bound to be tension and animosity.

But Cold Steel is taking it to the next level.

In a press release, Cold Steel announced that it’s suing CRKT over misleading marketing assertions. Cold Steel says CRKT’s claims that its various locking mechanisms—including LAWKS, AutoLAWKS, and L.B.S—can convert a folding knife into a “virtual fixed blade” is not only misleading customers into buying poorly performing knives but also causing losses to their business.

Here’s more from Cold Steel President Lynn C. Thompson: “Consumers are entitled to truthful information. They need to know what a knife can and can’t do. We are a nation of people who USE our knives. Responsible knife owners want to use their tools, and they should be given honest information about the performance, reliability and safety they should expect.”

So what does Cold Steel want out of this lawsuit? The company is seeking an unspecified amount of money from damages caused by CRKT’s “blatantly false claims” and “dishonest tactics,” which will then be donated to Knife Rights. It also wants an injunction, treble damages, and attorneys’ fees.

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The knife, in case you’re not aware, is the world’s oldest tool.  It’s been around for close to 3 million years and is suffused in cultural and historical significance.  At Knife Depot, we’re proud to be able to offer an inventory of 10,000 knives to customers across the U.S. and abroad.  It’s a product we cherish and believe in.

Our customers use their knives everyday in a wide array of capacities.  Whether they’re hunters or fisherman, outdoorsman or collectors, their relationships with knives are built upon a love for craftsmanship, self-reliance and the outdoors.

It’s for that reason that we’ve become deeply dismayed by recent efforts by companies like Google and Facebook to label completely legal knives as weapons and to restrict their advertisement on the Internet

In March, I wrote about our battles with Google’s AdWords program, in which our entire account had been shut down due to the fact that we sold completely legal assisted-opening knives that were never prohibited in Google’s AdWords policy.

At the time, we didn’t expect to ever be able to advertise with Google again, however, we had our account re-activated in May with the caveat that none of our landing pages could have assisted-opening knives on them.

Then, just this month, our AdWords account was once again shut down without any advanced notice. We were informed that Google considered “throwing knives” to be weapons and we could not run any ads to those pages.

Wait, a throwing knife is a weapon?

The characterization of throwing knives as weapons, was of course, news to us and anyone who has ever used a throwing knife before.  Every throwing knife we sell has been designed for hitting bullseyes, not bodies.

Could you injure someone with a throwing knife?  Sure, in the same way you could injure someone with a baseball, a frying pan, a brick, a bottle, a rabid cat or a slew of other projectiles that can become weapons if paired with malicious intent.

However, a throwing knife is poorly suited for criminal activity.  These knives are generally large, making them hard to conceal; they have blunt edges and they’re damn hard to throw with fatal accuracy.  I mean, let’s be honest, are you really going to be more afraid of a guy like this trying to rob you then someone with a chainsaw they bought at Walmart?

I rest my case. But Google wasn’t swayed, so they banned us and all other advertisers from advertising bodacious, throwing blades, despite the fact that their Adwords policy doesn’t mention any prohibition of “throwing knives.”

Facebook Also Fears the Almighty Power of The Blade

So, we couldn’t run any more ads for throwing knives, but neither could any of our competitors.  And, at least, we still had Facebook, arguably the world’s most robust platform for demographically-targeted advertising, to alert our legions of knife fans to our products.

For three years, Knife Depot has pretty much crushed it on Facebook, amassing 48,000 fans and a whole lot of social media love.  Our success has come the hard way, as we have been banned from boosting posts due to Facebook’s interpretation of a knife as a “weapon.”

Since we couldn’t boost our posts, we recently started running Facebook ads  via a pretty badass company called Ad Roll.   But before we could even get cranking, we received notice from Ad Roll that our ads had slashed by Facebook’s anti-knife policy.

So I have some less than pleasant news for you.  It looks like Facebook is following suit with Google and tightening their policies. We are going to have to take down the current facebook ads and (and the news feeds ads which never got started) which is a total bummer.  I have had our ops team trying to push them through anyway, but we’ve hit a brick wall with it.  

A Knife Isn’t a Weapon; It’s a Lifesaving Tool

A knife isn’t a weapon; it’s a tool, and one that saves lives every year.  Just last week, in the tragic plane crash in San Francisco, police officers tossed utility knives to passengers so they could cut themselves out of seat belts.  On this blog alone, we’ve chronicled dozens of incidents in which knives have saved lives.

If Facebook wants to criminalize knives, why stop there?  Why not restrict advertising for golf clubs, one of which was used just last week by a man who bludgeoned a woman to death in Arizona.  How about baseball bats?  Earlier this month, a deranged man killed a homeless man with one in a sporting goods store in California.

The bottom line is that there are hundreds of products that can be used for malicious crimes if the person who owns them is hell-bent on destruction.

What Knife Depot is Doing and How You Can Help

Most of the anti-knife reaction by Internet companies unfortunately mirrors much of the anti-knife hysteria that exists out in public.  At Knife Depot, we’re proud to support organizations like Knife Rights and the American Knife and Tool Association, which lobby on behalf of knife owners.

If you want to cut away at anti-knife sentiment, consider donating to either of these two organizations.  You can also share this blog post to alert others to the anti-knife policies of companies like Facebook and Google.  Thanks for being a Knife Depot fan and rest assured we’ll never back down on our commitment to selling top-quality knives, no matter how much discrimination our product faces.

March 6, 2013, may have been the most newsworthy day for pocket knives in history.

On that date, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced that it would be allowing small pocket knives (under 2.36 inches) on planes.

The policy change, which brought the U.S. in step with regulations across most of the world, was seen by knife owners as not only a personal victory, but also a step toward a more sensible and effective policy for TSA.

In addition to allowing small knives on a plane, the rule reversal also meant that individuals would be permitted to carry hockey sticks and golf clubs on board.

TSA officials cited the low risk of these items to passenger safety and the time-consuming task of searching for them as the reason for the policy change.

“The focus is on what could present catastrophic damage to the aircraft,” said David Castelveter, a TSA spokesman.

Backlash Erupts Over Pocket Knives On Planes

The rule change, which was result of significant lobbying by knife advocacy groups such as The American Knife and Tool Institute, was quickly the target of harsh criticism from a number of different groups.

The most vehement objection came from the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), who characterized the decision as one that makes both airline employees and passengers less secure.

The organization started an online petition, No Knives On Planes.com,  and recently filed a grievance with the TSA, stating that “permitting knives in the cabin is an unnecessary risk to the traveling public.”

Member of Congress from both parties also vowed opposition to allowing knives on planes.

New York Senator Charles Schumer blasted the decision in a radio interview with a local station.

“You don’t have to have a PhD in physics, you don’t have to be Albert Einstein to know that these items are dangerous.” he said.

Family members of 9/11 victims were also angry

TSA Backs Down in Wake of Boston Marathon Bombings

While the AFA and other organizations decried the decision, a number of transportation safety experts, journalists and policymakers supported the change.

In a article for the libertarian publication Reason, J.D. Tuccille, blasted the AFA for its opposition. Tuccile  noted, as many others had, that there were a number of other equally harmful, if not more dangerous items that would be allowed in board, but weren’t drawing the same criticism.

I hesitate to point this out for fear of sending the flight attendants’ association into an organizational panic, but the same TSA notice allowing for small knives also allows novelty bats, pool cues and golf clubs.

Honestly, in a bar fight, I’m reaching for the pool cue, not my Leatherman micra.

It’s also been pointed out by many that TSA currently allows pointed scissors with blades up to four inches long, knitting needles and screwdrivers as long as seven inches, and glass bottles, all of which can easily be transformed into a deadly weapon.

Lastly, many cited the fact that since all cockpits are now fortified, it would be impossible to hijack a plane using a pocket knife.

It appeared that, despite the opposition, TSA would go ahead and begin allowing pocket knives on planes starting April 25.

Yet, on April 23, two days before the new rule would go into effect, TSA announced that it would delay the change while considering additional input from airline companies, passenger advocates and other stakeholders.

Many suggested that in addition to the backlash, the recent bombing at the Boston Marathon may have also swayed TSA to move more cautiously.

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