Author Topic: Knife Rights: Amicus Brief Filed in Hawaii Butterfly Knife Second Amendment Case  (Read 534 times)

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Online Elderberry

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Ammoland by Doug Ritter 9/1/2020

Knife Rights Foundation today announced the filing of an important Amicus Curiae (Friend of the Court) brief in a Second Amendment lawsuit currently before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The case, captioned Teter v. Connors, challenges the State of Hawaii's outright ban on butterfly knives. You can view or download the brief at http://bit.ly/teter-kr-brief.

Previously, the district court ruled in favor of the State on its motion for summary judgment, finding that Hawaii's butterfly knife ban “does not severely burden” the Second Amendment and that it survives intermediate scrutiny because it “further[ed] the State's important interest to promote public safety by reducing access to butterfly knives, which leads to gang related crime.” If that sounds like a regurgitation of the baseless arguments used to enact switchblade bans in the 1950's, that's because it is.

Balisong knives are legal to possess and carry in at least 43 states (16 because of Knife Rights' efforts repealing switchblade and butterfly knife bans since 2010), and Hawaii is one of only three states that specifically ban these knives. The district court's flawed analysis failed to consider that Hawaii had no ban on these commonly available knives until 1999, and data does not show that the ban was tailored to an actual problem, let alone that it meaningfully reduces crime.

More: https://www.ammoland.com/2020/09/knife-rights-amicus-brief-filed-in-hawaii-butterfly-knife-second-amendment-case/#axzz6WqjecEq1

Online Elderberry

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Second Amendment Knife Case in Hawaii: Dangerous Opinion

 Ammoland Inc. Posted on September 10, 2020 by Dean Weingarten   

https://www.ammoland.com/2020/09/second-amendment-knife-case-in-hawaii-dangerous-opinion/

Quote
The Hawai'i Federal District Court has issued an opinion in Teter v. Connors that guts the Second Amendment.

The opinion holds that even if butterfly or “balisong” knives are protected by the Second Amendment of the Constitution, a state law banning any possession, manufacture or transport of such knives is constitutionally valid. From the opinion:

    The popularity of an all-encompassing class of weapon (the knife, or even the folding knife)is immaterial when only one narrow subset of the class (the butterfly knife) is banned here.The Court declines to treat the ban on butterfly knives—a relatively obscure weapon—the same way the Heller Court viewed the ban on handguns—the “quintessential”self-defense weapon. Doing so would neglect the Supreme Court’s emphasis on the regulated weapon at issue—and by extension much of the Court’s reasoning that led to its ultimate holding. This case simply does not amount to the same level of “destruction of the [Second Amendment] right” as Heller.

The plaintiffs are appealing the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals.
The District Court opinion shows how appeals courts hostile to the Second Amendment have been successfully salami slicing away Second Amendment rights.

The Supreme Court has been deadlocked and unable or unwilling to protect the exercise of those rights. Without the election of Donald Trump and the appointment of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, the Second Amendment would be dead letter law across the United States. Instead, federal appeals courts in circuits hostile to the Second Amendment have been using the lack of SCOTUS action to slice away most meaningful Second Amendment protections in several Circuits, notably the Ninth and the Second Circuits.

More at link.