There’s been a great deal of litigation recently about firearms and the Second Amendment. But guns aren’t the only “arms” sometimes carried for self-defense, and there have been several recent cases about the status of knives under the federal Constitution and state constitutions. The most recent case is State v. Murillo, __ P.3d __, 2015 WL 170053 (N.M. Ct. App. Jan. 21, 2015), holding that the New Mexico statute prohibiting possession of a switchblade knife did not violate the state or federal constitutions. Applying intermediate scrutiny, the court found that the provision “bans only a small subset of knives, which are themselves a peripheral subset of arms typically used for self-defense.” Further, it found that the prohibition addresses the serious problem of the use of such weapons for criminal activity. The court specifically declined to follow State v. Delgado, 692 P.2d 610 (Or. 1984), which struck down Oregon’s switchblade ban under the state constitution’s right to bear arms. Other recent cases about knives include State v. DiCiccio, 105 A.3d 165 (Conn. 2014) (holding that knives and batons are “arms” within the scope of the Second Amendment and that a state statute prohibiting the transportation of such weapons between residences impermissibly infringes the right to possess them), and City of Seattle v. Evans, 327 P.3d 1303 (Wash. Ct. App. 2014) (“[W]e hold that as applied in this case, Seattle’s prohibition on carrying a fixed-blade knife in public [in this case, a kitchen knife in the defendant’s pocket] did not violate [the defendant’s] [...]
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