According to Newsweek, magistrates at the MSJC based the overturn on the 2022 New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. The federal high court ruled at the time that citizens have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense. This ruling was subsequently applied to the Aug. 27 ruling by the Bay State's highest court.
The MSJC ruled that switchblades do not need special restrictions under the Second Amendment, allowing residents to arm themselves with switchblades for self-defense. MSJC Associate Justice Serge Georges Jr. concluded that spring-loaded knives are "arms" under the high court's majority opinion.
"Nothing about the physical qualities of switchblades suggests they are uniquely dangerous," he wrote. "Therefore, the carrying of switchblades is presumptively protected by the plain text of the Second Amendment." (Related: 2nd Amendment 'does not exist' in some NY courtrooms according to one judge presiding over the trial of a gunsmith.)
Officials in the Bay State pointed to three cases from the 1800s that found restrictions on certain types of knives lawful. These included a ruling in Tennessee that upheld a prohibition on Bowie knives. But according to the majority opinion, officials did not identify any historical bans on switchblades or pocket knives – their historical analog.
"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. Accordingly, the Commonwealth has not met its burden of demonstrating a historical tradition justifying the regulation of switchblade knives."
Right to keep and bear arms – switchblades included – shall not be infringed
The MSJC's Aug. 27 decision arose from a case brought by David Canjura, who was arrested in 2020 after a domestic dispute. Following a search by officers, he was charged with carrying a dangerous weapon in violation of the switchblade ban first implemented in 1957.
Canjura said he knew carrying the knife violated the law but filed a motion to dismiss the charge, arguing that the ban violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms. A judge denied the motion, leading to an appeal that reached the state's high court.
"In short, folding pocketknives 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 majority ruling stated.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, a Democrat, criticized the MSJC's decision and called switchblades "dangerous" in a statement.
"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," Campbell said in a statement. "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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