Massachusetts Supreme Court: Switchblade Carry Ban Violates Second Amendment

The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled Tuesday the state’s ban on carrying switchblade knives violates the Second Amendment.

The case is Commonwealth v. David E. Canjura.

Canjura was arrested on July 3, 2020, and a search of his person uncovered a knife “with a spring-assisted blade.” He was charged with “carrying a dangerous weapon,” among other charges, but challenged the constitutionality of the switchblade carry ban “in a pretrial motion to dismiss.”

He “argued that because a switchblade is an ‘arm,’ [the] prohibition on carrying a switchblade violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms for self-defense.”

The Massachusetts Supreme Court weighed Canjura’s motion via the U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller (2008) and Bruen (2022) decisions, noting, “The ccentral component’ of the Second Amendment is the ‘inherent right of self-defense,’ which “guarantee[s] to ‘all Americans’ the right to bear commonly used arms in public subject to certain reasonable, well-defined restrictions.”

They observed, “While both Heller and Bruen involved handguns, Second Amendment protections subsume more than just firearms.”

The Massachusetts Supreme Court then focused specifically on Bruen’s “two part test” and found “the Commonwealth does not identify any laws regulating
bladed weapons akin to folding pocketknives generally, or switchblades particularly, in place at the time of the founding or ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

They subsequently observed that the Commonwealth “has not met its burden of demonstrating a historical tradition justifying the regulation of switchblade knives…”

The Massachusetts Supreme Court wrote: “In this case, we are asked to decide whether…[the] prohibition against carrying a switchblade knife violates the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, considering…Bruen. We conclude it does.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio, a member of Gun Owners of America, and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and has a Ph.D. in Military History. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.