Massachusetts Judicial Supreme Court Rules Switchblade To Be “Protected Arms”

Last week, a Federal District Court Judge in California ruled that switchblades are not “protected arms” under the Second Amendment, but now the Massachusetts Judicial Supreme Court has ruled that they are protected.

The case, Commonwealth v. Canjura, involves a man arrested for carrying a switchblade in Boston, Massachusetts. State law defines a switchblade as “a knife with a blade that is over 1.5 inches long and has an automatic spring release device that allows the blade to be released from the handle.” The punishment for carrying a switchblade can be up to five years in prison.

On July 3. 2020, Boston police responded to a report of a man and woman fighting. When police arrived, they found David Canjura preventing his girlfriend from leaving the scene. The police separated the parties. Mr. Canjura’s girlfriend told officers he took her phone and would not return it. Two other people came forward, stating they saw Canjura push his then-girlfriend against a wall. Police would arrest the man and search him. They discover an orange firearm-shaped knife with a spring-assisted blade. They charged him for carrying a switchblade knife and for domestic violence.

Prosecutors would drop all charges except for carrying a switchblade charge. During a pretrial hearing, Canjura’s attorney would file for a motion to dismiss because he argued that switchblades were “protected arms” under the Second Amendment and the Massachusetts law banning the knives was unconstitutional. The motion would fail, and Canjura would then tender “an admission to sufficient facts for a finding of guilt on the charge,” but he would reserve his right to appeal, believing the motion to dismiss should have been granted. He would appeal, and the Massachusetts Judicial Supreme Court would approve his application for direct appellate review.

Mr. Canjura’s lawyer argued that switchblades are “protected arms” under the Second Amendment. He stated the knives are in common use for lawful purposes and not “dangerous and unusual.” This argument is similar to the statements made by Knife Rights in Knife Rights Inc. v. Bonta. In that case, the judge ruled that “common use” is actually “common use for self-defense” and “dangerous and unusual” is actually “dangerous or unusual.” Luckily for Canjura, the Massachusetts Judicial Supreme Court had a very different idea from the California judge.

Massachusetts tried to argue that the plain text of the Second Amendment doesn’t cover knives because “arms” only applies to firearms. If the judge signed onto this argument, the defendant would fail the first step on Bruen, which says a law must be consistent with the original text of the Second Amendment. The court would not need to review the case further, but the judges rejected the state’s arguments and stated that knives were “arms” during the founding era. The defendant also used the 1.2 million switchblades sold yearly to prove “common use.” Unlike the California judge, these judges accepted the figure without attaching “for self-defense” to the legal standard. The defense also argued that switchblades might be “dangerous,” but there is nothing to make them more “dangerous and unusual” than other knives. The judges agreed.

“In the most basic sense, all weapons are ‘dangerous’ because they are designed for the purpose of bodily assault or defense,” the court wrote. “As such, general dangerousness of a weapon is irrelevant where the weapon belongs to a class of arms commonly used for self-defense. Consequently, spring-loaded folding knives cannot be categorically prohibited just because they are, in everyday terms, ‘dangerous.’ At the very least, for purposes of this analysis, ‘dangerous’ weapons must feature uniquely dangerous qualities that are disproportionate to their use for self-defense.”

Since part one of Bruen was satisfied, part two shifts the burden to the state to prove that the law is consistent with the history and tradition of the Second Amendment. Usually, courts use the ratification date of the Second Amendment as the founding era, which is 1791. The farther from that date, the less weight a law has in regard to arms. The Massachusetts Judicial Supreme Court actually gave a break to the state by allowing laws from the ratification date of the 14th Amendment, which was 1868, to be considered part of the founding era, but the state still failed at producing relevant historical analogs.

Massachusetts relied on laws surrounding bowie knives from the 1830s as its analogs. In Rahimi, the Supreme Court said that a historical analog doesn’t have to be a historical twin, but it must be similar. The Massachusetts Judicial Supreme Court didn’t believe that the bowie law knife was good enough because it dealt with a fixed-blade knife, and a switchblade knife is closer to a folding knife. They reasoned that if the founders wanted to ban folding knives, they would have since they were used during the founding era. The court ruled that the state failed step two of Bruen.

The state wanted the Massachusetts Judicial Supreme Court to remand the case back to the lower court if they felt the lower court erred in denying the motion to dismiss. The court was unwilling to remand the case to give the state another shot. Instead, the court reversed the lower court’s ruling and approved the motion to dismiss. This legal victory doesn’t knock down the Massachusetts switchblade law but sets up a future challenge and a powerful argument for dismissal for those charged with carrying a switchblade.

About John Crump

Mr. Crump is an NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people from all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons, follow him on X at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.