Could it be? (Texas to allow switchblades)

It never hurts to get official rulings.

I think that if someone can make a good case for it and finds a willing representative, it would not be terribly difficult to get a lot of the TX knife laws reworked during the next legislative session to be more common sense.

Getting additional items off the prohibited/illegal list might be tricky, but I think it would be possible to get some proper definitions inserted in place of the undefined and ambiguous terms that now pepper the law.

You'd be surprised.

The preemption attempt was blocked by one committee chairman so preemption stalled and was stripped from the attempt and switchblade repeal went through.

Just because laws are outdated and nonsensical to us doesn't mean they're easy to get rid of when there's a body of myth around knives.

Well, I never cease to be amazed at what legislators will and won't go for, so you could be right.

The preemption attempt was blocked by one committee chairman so preemption stalled...

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I can guess the committee chairman's district--or at least who he's friends with. This one was bound to get some opposition from specific districts that were going to be affected by the preemption law. It doesn't really surprise me that someone found a way to block it.

Things that I could see as possible would be changing the prohibition against dirks/daggers to a prohibition against double/multi-edged knives.

Another prime example is the prohibition against swords which doesn't actually prohibit anything at all since there are no swords with blades shorter than 5.5".

The old joke about how politics and sausage are made is pretty accurate. There are rules to the game, but they recognize that politics doesn't have to make sense and that many politicians can't be trusted.

Torian,

Until KR got this bill through you were committing crime if you carried that Gerber Covert Auto in public.

...you were committing crime if you carried that Gerber Covert Auto in public.

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It's worse than that. Unless you owned/posessed the knife in question "solely as an antique or curio", or "incidental to the performance of official duty by the armed forces or national guard, a governmental law enforcement agency, or a correctional facility", it was illegal. Not just when it was carried in public although carrying it in public would likely make it impossible to try to claim that the knife was owned solely as an antique or curio.

Switchblades were/are NOT "Unlawful Carrying Weapons"--i.e. weapons which are legal to own but subject to carry restrictions in public.

Switchblades were/are "Prohibited Weapons". As such, it was/is illegal to "intentionally or knowingly possess, manufacture, transport, repair, or sell" a switchblade knife.

Why all the "were/are", "is/was" verbiage? The new law doesn't go into effect until 1 September. Don't jump the gun.

I'm tracking that there were exemptions in place for us,

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Not off base there isn't. That mistaken impression of special privilege only extends to while in uniform and only while on official business. Since there can't be much official business for military off base except in very limited extraordinary circumstances you could be charged just like anyone else. Moreover, you could also be charged with carrying a dagger with the Applegate Covert Auto in your pocket. A "two-fer".

Yep

They don't care if it is sharpened or not. Only if it has the profile of a dagger making it a "stabby thing". Considering the fact that crimes are almost exclusively committed with a kitchen or steak knife or box cutter that can be thrown down most knife laws are grossly antiquated. That's why KR is fighting these silly and outdated laws to keep guys like you from getting tossed in jail for carrying a knife they can by in many places and that a criminal won't spend the money on.

There's no official definition of dagger in the TX law. So there's no way to know for sure that any particular knife is or isn't a dagger.

I've not heard of it being based specifically on blade profile, but that doesn't mean anything. You're almost certainly in trouble with a double-edged knife, but there's nothing saying you're in the clear if it's not double-edged.

It's legal to own bayonets, but you can't carry them off your own property unless they aren't daggers/dirks/bowie knives/swords/spears and don't have blades over 5.5". Knives that fit one or more of those mostly undefined categories are "unlawful carrying weapons".

Switchblades (for another few months) fall under the category of "Prohibited Weapons". That category includes machine guns and explosive weapons and has an entirely different set of restrictions. In general, ownership of items in that category is not legal.

Very interesting--thanks for posting.

Unfortunately while the case law provides some useful information it doesn't really provide definitions.

The dagger/dirk/stiletto/poniard definition, for example tells us one type of knife that qualifies as illegal, but doesn't tell us whether or not a knife that fails to meet one or more of those qualifications might still be an illegal knife. So, while we know that a knife that is:

• Over seven inches in length when open
• equipped with a double guard
• blade that locks open
• sharpened on both sides of blade for over an inch

...is an illegal knife, we still don't know if a knife that is:

• Exactly seven inches in length when open
• equipped with a single guard
• blade that locks open
• sharpened on one side of blade for over an inch but only for 0.75" on the other side

...is an illegal knife.

In other words, the case law provides examples of illegal knives and that lets us know for sure (in at least some cases) that a given knife is illegal. But those examples still don't provide enough information to let us know for sure if a knife is legal if it doesn't fully meet the qualifications that resulted in one particular instance of prosecution.

(D) bowie knife;
Mireles v. State, 192 S.W. 241 (Tex. Crim. App. 1917) A knife in a scabbard with a blade
nine inches long and a handle four or five inches long described as a butcher knife was
embraced in the term “bowie knife” as defined by the Penal Code.

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Which is ridiculous... A knife with a blade 9 inches long is already illegal under the blade length limitation in the law. I have no idea what the point of the bowie knife restriction in TX is.

Wolfebyte,

I don't grasp the point you're trying to communicate.

Thanks for the explanation.

The history of prohibition of carrying "Bowie" and "Arkansas Toothpick" is interesting and dates back to the period of mad popularity of so-called Bowie knives and "dueling". From Texas to Tennessee laws were enacted to stop the honor fights by the attempt to stop the carrying of these weapons. Like so many outdated laws, these are still on the books in many places.