We get plenty of questions on what's legal to carry where and the most up to date information on that can be carried on your phone from the folks at Knife Rights.
Handy App if you travel with knives
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CapnMac
Member
Where has this been all my life? 
Excellent find.
Excellent find.
Plainsman
Member
And a 1.7 rating! I think they need to update based on the reviews alone!
OP
OP
I'm not sure what people expect from the app since it is basically an information source.
I've used it for years and it provides what I expect of it.
I've used it for years and it provides what I expect of it.
From the reviews, it looks like people are annoyed by the disclaimers and don't like the UI.
If it's following the same chart that can be found on the web, it may also have accuracy issues. What does it say about Federal Way, WA blade length limit?
If it's following the same chart that can be found on the web, it may also have accuracy issues. What does it say about Federal Way, WA blade length limit?
OP
OP
Since they're an organization that gets knife laws changed their information should be up to date.
OP
OP
Information on cities will be limited to major municipalities where they can be verified and tracked. Any reliable source on the laws below the state level will only provide the largest municipality where they effect the greatest number of people and van be tracked and validate (enormous effort to do this across hundreds of jurisdictions). Providing status on a small outlying community like Federal Way can't serve as a benchmark for information because it won't be reliable from any source other than local knife owner advocates that may track it and publish it with unpredictable and untimely accuracy. Reliable information sources should include information about preemption in a state and provide the warning that local jurisdictions may enact more restrictions greater than state law, as Knife Rights has done.
This fragmented patchwork was the situation in TN until preemption was passed and signed. You could leave home in the morning with a perfectly legal knife, cross the city or county line and have the knife be illegal for violating some detail, leave work and go shopping or visit a family member in another jurisdiction where the same knife was illegal for some other detail and then cross back into your jurisdiction where it became legal again. Such a crazy rag quilt of laws are avoided by preemption which is why it has been a cornerstone of KR's political efforts.
Admiredly, KR's app isn't very elegant since it is basically a color coded table and the necessary disclaimer is offputting, but there's no other reliably up to date source of the information covering all the states even at the national industry organization AKTI website (I'm a member there as well and frustraatingly their website lags behind at times).
This fragmented patchwork was the situation in TN until preemption was passed and signed. You could leave home in the morning with a perfectly legal knife, cross the city or county line and have the knife be illegal for violating some detail, leave work and go shopping or visit a family member in another jurisdiction where the same knife was illegal for some other detail and then cross back into your jurisdiction where it became legal again. Such a crazy rag quilt of laws are avoided by preemption which is why it has been a cornerstone of KR's political efforts.
Admiredly, KR's app isn't very elegant since it is basically a color coded table and the necessary disclaimer is offputting, but there's no other reliably up to date source of the information covering all the states even at the national industry organization AKTI website (I'm a member there as well and frustraatingly their website lags behind at times).
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First, thanks for taking time to reply.
OK, good to know. There is one well-indexed site that attempts this and has a similar table layout to the screenshots of this app in the Google Play store. The problem is that that website is frequently re-quoted and that the information is incomplete. Federal Way is one example. The municipal code has a clause that limits blade length to 3" in facilities that serve alcohol by the drink. The same language is repeated in several other local municipal codes in the area, so all of those show up on that table as a general blade length limit b/c the table isn't properly annotated. My concern was of a similar occurrence in the app due to the limitations of the format.
I appreciate the work they've done with cleaning up the language or at least appending the laws on switchblades here in Washington to clarify the legality of assisted openers. II hope we can also get state preemption here as well. We've got some squiggly city limit lines in the Puget Sound and outlying areas, so it's necessary to search each citie's municipal code that you travel through or might travel through on a regular basis to try to stay legal. It's a bit absurd. To me, this would be the best feature of an app like this. It'd be a huge time saver. I can see where limiting it to only major jurisdictions makes sense. It's better to keep it accurate than to try to be comprehensive and end up being inaccurate.
That seems to be the main complaint on the reviews. It does look a bit crude, but I don't mind that so much if it's usable. I'd rather they err on the side of getting the info out there than on the side of making it pretty, personally. It's not like they can't update it later. It should be noted that the overall rating is still 4 stars. So, it can't be completely unusable. (That last for anyone concerned about the side discussions of the negative reviews; it's good to keep in mind they aren't the majority.)
Thanks again for the detailed info. Sounds like it's not as useful to me, as I'm in that patchwork situation you described, but it is a nice reminder that it's a good time to drop them another donation. Doug Ritter does good work both with Knife Rights and with his main website.
OK, good to know. There is one well-indexed site that attempts this and has a similar table layout to the screenshots of this app in the Google Play store. The problem is that that website is frequently re-quoted and that the information is incomplete. Federal Way is one example. The municipal code has a clause that limits blade length to 3" in facilities that serve alcohol by the drink. The same language is repeated in several other local municipal codes in the area, so all of those show up on that table as a general blade length limit b/c the table isn't properly annotated. My concern was of a similar occurrence in the app due to the limitations of the format.
I appreciate the work they've done with cleaning up the language or at least appending the laws on switchblades here in Washington to clarify the legality of assisted openers. II hope we can also get state preemption here as well. We've got some squiggly city limit lines in the Puget Sound and outlying areas, so it's necessary to search each citie's municipal code that you travel through or might travel through on a regular basis to try to stay legal. It's a bit absurd. To me, this would be the best feature of an app like this. It'd be a huge time saver. I can see where limiting it to only major jurisdictions makes sense. It's better to keep it accurate than to try to be comprehensive and end up being inaccurate.
That seems to be the main complaint on the reviews. It does look a bit crude, but I don't mind that so much if it's usable. I'd rather they err on the side of getting the info out there than on the side of making it pretty, personally. It's not like they can't update it later. It should be noted that the overall rating is still 4 stars. So, it can't be completely unusable. (That last for anyone concerned about the side discussions of the negative reviews; it's good to keep in mind they aren't the majority.)
Thanks again for the detailed info. Sounds like it's not as useful to me, as I'm in that patchwork situation you described, but it is a nice reminder that it's a good time to drop them another donation. Doug Ritter does good work both with Knife Rights and with his main website.
OP
OP
I'm afraid Seattle controls too big a block of votes for that to happen. The way for you to get it though would be to demonstrate that minorities are being disproportionately pro/per-secuted for the knives they carry in Seattle. That's been the case in NYC and the support for Knife Rights bills in the state (passed overwhelming 2 times, but vetoed by Cuomo both times) and federal lawsuit against NYC have primarily come from the ACLU, DPNY, Village Voice, and even the NYT as the great majority of victims of NYC's abuse of the gravity knife laws have been low income workers from the minority communities.
Yes, it is essential. The first time anyone posts out of date advice/information it would put citizens at risk. Since municipal information isn't easy to get and can change from one "council" meeting to another it would be dangerous to attempt to present too much detail.
KR is just Doug, Susie and Todd (and Todd is a paid consultant for the firearms industry that's been converted into a knife nut
). Their remarkably effective with such a tiny dedicated staff and the volunteers scattered across the state. I spent my weekend representing them here at the knife show trying to get folks from KY, GA and TN to keep supporting them even though we've been enjoying the benefit of their efforts for 2 years now.
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