Fifth Circuit Strikes Down 1958 Switchblade Act's Interstate Ban

The Fifth Circuit ruled on October 21 that the federal ban on moving switchblade knives across state lines violates the Second Amendment. The court’s opinion in Knife Rights, Inc. v. Blanche, No. 25-10754, strikes down 15 U.S.C. § 1242 and leaves a second section of the Federal Switchblade Act in place.

Chief Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote for a panel that also included Judges Willett and Wilson. The court reversed the dismissal of the § 1242 claim, affirmed the dismissal of the challenge to § 1243, and remanded for further proceedings.

Congress enacted the act in 1958. Section 1242 sets a fine of up to $2,000, up to five years in prison, or both, for anyone who knowingly introduces, makes for introduction, transports or distributes a switchblade knife in interstate commerce. The statute defines a switchblade as a knife whose blade opens automatically, by a button in the handle or by inertia, gravity or both. It has an exception for spring-assisted knives that require a second hand.

The plaintiffs are Knife Rights, an advocacy group, two Texas-based businesses and five individuals. The two businesses are federally licensed firearms dealers that say they do not market automatic knives because of the act. They sued in the Northern District of Texas in September 2024. Several of them had filed an earlier suit in 2023 against § 1242 alone, which the district court dismissed for lack of standing. They did not appeal.

Why the Interstate Ban Failed the History Test

The court applied Bruen, the Supreme Court decision that puts the burden on the government to show a law fits the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. At step one, it held that switchblades are “arms” in common use. It pointed to knives built into some flintlock pistols in the 1700s and to large-scale U.S. production that began in the 1880s. It also said the record shows “millions” of automatically opening knives in the United States now, used lawfully for hunting, fishing and camping.

At step two, the government offered a tradition of regulating concealed weapons. The court said that goes to the “why,” the purpose of the law, and that the government made little argument on the “how,” the manner of regulation. The government cited no historical law regulating the manufacture, transportation or distribution of concealable weapons.

Its best source was a law review article cataloging nearly 200 pre-1900 statutes on daggers, dirks and sword canes. Only two of them, an 1881 Arkansas act and an 1837 Georgia act, regulated sales in a comparable way. The court treated the pair as outliers.

The district court had dismissed the claim because § 1242 was not an “effective ban on possession.” The Fifth Circuit said that approach led the analysis astray and that Bruen should have governed. At argument, the government said “we are not in a position to disavow enforcement,” and the opinion notes it has brought prosecutions under § 1242.

The Territories Provision Survives on Procedure

Section 1243 bars manufacture, sale or possession of switchblades in U.S. territories and possessions, in Indian country, and in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States. The district court had held the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge it. The Fifth Circuit disagreed. Plaintiff Rodney Shedd lives on Muscogee Nation land in Tulsa, Oklahoma, gave up a switchblade he owned in Arizona before moving there, and the government does not disavow enforcing the section. The Department of Justice has no record of a § 1243 prosecution, but its records date only to 2004.

On the merits the plaintiffs brought only a facial challenge. Outside the First Amendment, that requires showing that no set of circumstances exists under which the law would be valid. Lawful applications, the government said, include certain aircraft, courthouses, federal prisons, embassies and military bases. Those listed uses defeated the challenge, and the court did not decide whether § 1243 itself violates the Second Amendment.

On October 21 the Fifth Circuit remanded the case for further proceedings consistent with its opinion. No hearing date appears in the opinion.