This article appeared in Knife Magazine in December 2025
Know Your Knife Laws – Lessons from an Actual Switchblade Case
By Anthony Sculimbrene, Attorney and Knife Expert
In 2004, I started working at the New Hampshire Public Defender right out of law school. Public defenders are lawyers who represent people who are: a) charged with a crime that could result in incarceration; and b) are very poor (“indigent” as taken from Gideon v. Wainwright, the case that gave rise to public defenders). The idea is that the State, with its vast arsenal of paid lawyers, investigators, and scientists, can’t put people in jail without giving those people a fair shot. And while I think the system is still far from fair, public defenders are a critical component in making it fairer. I worked as a public defender from 2004 until 2016, and I still volunteer to take cases that the main public defender cannot handle. In addition to being an excellent forge for crafting legal abilities, the public defender gave me a lot of experience and one case really impacted how I thought about knives and the law.
The client’s name is lost to time (I represented roughly 4,000 people in about 8,000 cases over the years), but the facts, which are all public record, stick with me to this day. My client had a court date for a drug possession charge (it was marijuana, which is now decriminalized in New Hampshire…this is a theme throughout this article). She did not have a car, so her boyfriend, who happened to be her dealer, drove her to court. As they were walking in, he saw the magnetometer approaching and handed her his folder — a Kershaw Leek. He told her she needed to “hold it for him.” She did, and when she passed through the magnetometer, it went off, and court officers took it from her. They examined it and determined that it was a “switchblade.” Of course, New Hampshire was one of the first states to repeal their switchblade laws, but that wouldn’t happen for a few more years. Police came, and my client, who was already in trouble, got charged with possession of a switchblade and a breach of bail.
I knew a little about knives, and I was convinced that this was not a switchblade. I was also confident that if a judge found that it was, Kershaw’s efforts with their Speedsafe “assisted opener” design would be in serious trouble. Note that the “bias towards closure” language that was added to the Federal Switchblade Act to clarify why assisted-opening knives were not switchblades was not added until 2009. I reached out to Kershaw, and they were incredible. They sent an entire kit of information explaining why the Speedsafe wasn’t a switchblade, including design schematics and an unsharpened demonstrator Leek showing how the internal mechanisms work. Kershaw also volunteered to fly out an engineer to testify on our behalf if needed.
Armed with this information, I got to work. My first hope was to get the video of the entryway to the court to see if the “handoff” was recorded. Unfortunately, the video camera only caught the very front of the line of people going into court meaning that the handoff was off camera. So it came down to a defense based on the knife itself. I did two things. First, I filed a motion claiming that New Hampshire’s switchblade law was void for vagueness. Second, I provided the Kershaw kit to the prosecutors during a meeting.
The argument in the motion to dismiss was straightforward. Laws that are overly broad or unclear violate the Constitution. This occurs when, as Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in City of Chicago v. Morales, “a law…is so vague and standard less that it leaves the public uncertain as to the conduct it prohibits.” Notably, this is a very hard argument to make. The reason is simple–courts aren’t legislatures and they don’t want to undo the work of their coequal partners in government. The problem here was obvious–the word “switchblade” was, at the time, without a real definition, especially as it applied to the knife in question.
I also met with the prosecutors in person, bringing along the Kershaw kit. The two prosecutors, who I still talk to regularly, were both engaged and smart guys. One of them, like me, was a knife guy. So we all sat around their office fiddling with the kit. We also called up videos of switchblades on YouTube (which did exist at the time). The knife guy prosecutor was sold on the Leek not being a switchblade, for obvious and technically correct reasons. The other was not sure. He was, however, more concerned about the void for vagueness argument, because, as he told me, “if I am not sure, and I am, for all intents and purposes, the law, how can I prosecute someone for violating that law?” As a side note, this is exactly the kind of person that should have the enormous power that comes with being a prosecutor.
About two weeks later, I received a docket notation indicating that the charges for possession of a switchblade and the breach of bail were nolle prossed (abandoned or dismissed). The client later resolved the marijuana possession for a small fine, which, in a perfect turn of justice, her boyfriend paid. Somewhere in the dusty archives of the New Hampshire Public Defenders is a very rare unsharpened “demonstrator” Leek, sealed away in a case file for the past 21 years.
This case demonstrates a few lessons about litigating knife cases.
First, it is better to litigate knife issues in criminal cases than civil ones. Most obviously, in a criminal case, the knife owner receives the benefit of the burden of proof–that is, the State has to prove its case, not the knife owner. In a civil case, the opposite is true. Second, because criminal cases almost always intersect with multiple constitutional rights, the arguments the knife owner can make are much more powerful. In this case, had it occurred today, we could make both the void-for-vagueness due process argument AND a Second Amendment Bruen argument. In civil litigation, like that seen in Knife Rights v. Garland, at best, they have only one constitutional argument. Finally, in criminal cases, judges take things more seriously. If the question is: “Do I put this 24-year-old woman in jail?” they have one approach. If it is: “Do I let a group of knife collectors upend federal legislation?” the approach is different.
Second, this case shows the effectiveness of public defenders. While most people think that court is all about fancy lawyers and big cases, the vast majority of all cases, excluding divorces, are handled by public defenders in the way I handled this case. In many states, about 80% of all court cases are handled by public defenders. A lot of big Second Amendment cases have come from public defenders. Commonwealth v. Canjura, the case that eliminated Massachusetts’ switchblade ban, was a public defender case. So was Caetano v. Massachusetts, the first non-firearms case on the Second Amendment after Heller.
Third, this case shows the effectiveness of a legislative approach. Representative Jenn Coffey filed the legislation in New Hampshire that ended the switchblade ban. This case could not even be brought now. Similarly, Dan Lawson’s language amendment to the FSA, which included the “bias towards closure” language, would make this case moot for another reason. Finally, there is the fact that this lady wouldn’t even be in court today because of the decriminalization of marijuana.
The law is a business of relationships and thinking strategically. Moving forward, litigation efforts need to be paired with legislative ones, and the litigation efforts that have proven to be most successful are found in the criminal arena. Public defenders are always looking for allies and help given their incredibly small budgets, and knife owners, as lovers of freedom, seem like a natural partner.
The American Knife & Tool Institute (AKTI) has successfully worked since 1998 legislatively removing knife restrictions and clarifying laws. Knife laws are more responsible and understandable. Be sure you know the laws where you live, work, or travel to stay law-abiding.