A Fifth Circuit panel held yesterday that the Federal Switchblade Act’s interstate commerce restrictions on switchblade knives violate the Second Amendment.
Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote the opinion in Knife Rights, Inc. v. Blanche, joined by Judges Don Willett and Cory Wilson. The court applied the Supreme Court’s Bruen framework, found that switchblades qualify as “Arms,” and ruled that the government failed its historical-tradition burden on how the law restricts manufacture, transport, and distribution.
Section 2 of the Act, codified at 15 U.S.C. § 1242, makes it a crime to knowingly introduce or manufacture for introduction into interstate commerce, or to transport or distribute in interstate commerce, any switchblade knife. The statute authorizes a fine of up to $2,000, imprisonment of not more than five years, or both. Knife Rights, Inc. brought the challenge. Plaintiffs’ counsel included John William Dillon of Dillon Law Group, A.P.C., Richard Brent Cooper of Cooper & Scully, P.C., and Daniel Schmutter of Hartman & Winnicki, P.C.
The opinion opens by framing the dispute in plain terms.
"This case presents a Second Amendment challenge to the Federal Switchblade Act (FSA)'s restrictions on switchblade knives."
Elrod then stated the holding under the modern test.
"Applying the framework articulated in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, we hold that the FSA is unconstitutional."
Bruen requires courts first to decide whether the plain text of the Second Amendment covers the conduct. If it does, the government must show that the regulation fits the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. The Fifth Circuit walked that path and stopped the government at the second step’s “how” inquiry.
The panel determined that switchblade knives fall inside the Amendment’s plain text. Drawing on Heller’s founding-era definition of arms, the court recited the older understanding of the term.
"any thing that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another."
Elrod tied that definition to the weapons at issue.
"Switchblade knives have surely been used for ‘defence’ and to ‘strike another.’"
The court went further on common use. It noted that some forms of switchblades have been commonly used for defense for hundreds of years and therefore count as arms. The government’s “not-in-common-use” argument failed. The record, the panel said, shows “millions” of automatically opening knives in the United States now. It also reflects lawful use for everyday utility, hunting, fishing, recreation, camping, and hiking. Despite the FSA, lawful sales continue. On that basis the court treated switchblades as arms in common use both historically and today.
Historical production facts in the opinion reinforced the point. Springblade knives, described as precursors to the modern switchblade, have been made for hundreds of years because users needed a pocketknife that opens easily when hands are wet, cold, or gloved. Springblade-type knives appeared with certain flint-lock pistols in the 1700s. Patents proliferated after the Civil War. Large-scale U.S. production began in the 1880s. From the mid-1890s to the mid-1940s, about 20 companies manufactured switchblade knives in the United States over a roughly 50-year span. The panel summarized the constitutional conclusion in a short line: some forms of switchblades have been commonly used for defense for hundreds of years. They are arms.
Once the plain-text step was satisfied, the burden shifted. The Fifth Circuit stated the government’s task and its failure in direct language.
"Because the regulation implicates the amendment, the government bears the burden of establishing that the FSA comports with well-established principles of the Second Amendment and its regulatory tradition. The government fails to meet its burden. Specifically, the FSA's restrictions on the introduction, manufacture, transportation, and distribution of switchblades fail step two's ‘how’ analysis...."
The panel did not decide whether the government could satisfy the “why” half of the tradition test. It held that the “how” failure was enough.
"However, we do not reach the question of whether the government meets its burden as to the ‘why’ analysis because it fails the ‘how’ analysis."
On historical analogues, the government pointed to a claimed tradition of regulating “inherently concealable weapons” as particularly dangerous and tied that claim to congressional concerns about switchblades. It also cited a 2024 law review article by David B. Kopel and Joseph G.S. Greenlee, The History of Bans on Types of Arms Before 1900. The Fifth Circuit found the cited materials inadequate for § 1242’s manufacture, transportation, and distribution bans.
"The government cites no historical analogue that regulates the manufacture, transportation, or distribution of ‘inherently concealable weapons,’ much less switchblade knives. Rather, its analogues suggest that there is a tradition of regulating the manner of carrying concealable weapons...."
Of nearly two hundred pre-1900 statutes cataloged in the materials the government used, only two regulated bladed weapons in a manner analogous to § 1242. Those were an 1837 Georgia law and an 1881 Arkansas act covering sale or exchange of certain knives and cane weapons. The panel treated that ratio as decisive.
"Of the nearly two-hundred statutes, only two regulate bladed weapons in an analogous manner as § 1242."
"Two laws out of nearly two hundred bring us into outlier territory...."
The opinion describes § 1242 as a commerce-channel criminal ban, not a mere carry rule. It targets introduction into interstate commerce, manufacture for that introduction, transportation in interstate commerce, and distribution in interstate commerce. Penalties reach a $2,000 fine, five years in prison, or both. That structure mattered to the “how” analysis. Historical laws about the manner of carrying concealable weapons did not, in the court’s view, justify a federal ban on making, moving, and distributing the knives through interstate channels.
Michael E. Cumpston flagged the decision and excerpted the panel’s key passages, underscoring the Bruen holding and the failed analogue showing. The Fifth Circuit’s own words drive the result: switchblades are arms; the government did not prove a matching historical tradition for these commerce restrictions.
The ruling is a constitutional judgment on a specific federal criminal prohibition. Investigators and prosecutors who relied on § 1242’s interstate commerce bans now face a circuit holding that those bans fail Bruen’s historical test. The opinion does not, in the materials provided, spell out the precise remedy’s geographic reach, any stay, or mandate timing. It also does not detail the full district-court path or other FSA provisions beyond the § 1242 restrictions described.
What it does decide is clear. A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit held that the Second Amendment’s plain text covers switchblade knives as arms in common use, and that the federal government’s historical case for banning their introduction, manufacture for introduction, transportation, and distribution in interstate commerce fell short. Carry-style analogues and two outlier nineteenth-century state laws were not enough.
For Second Amendment litigation after Bruen, the decision adds an appeals-court application of the “how” inquiry to a bladed weapon and to commerce-channel bans rather than street-carry rules alone. The government argued danger and concealability. The court demanded analogues that regulate manufacture, transport, or distribution in a comparable way. It found almost none.
Authorities have not, in the available record, publicly detailed every downstream enforcement consequence of the holding. The caption names Blanche as the opposing party, but the materials do not expand that party’s title or office beyond the case name. No public results are set out here on whether other FSA sections were before the court. The absolute calendar date of the opinion is not fixed beyond the report that it was decided yesterday.
Procedurally, the next ordinary steps in a case of this kind would include any petition for rehearing, possible Supreme Court review, and clarification of the judgment’s scope. Those steps are not described in the present record. What the Fifth Circuit did resolve is the constitutional status of § 1242’s core commerce restrictions under Bruen.
Knives sit close to daily life for hunters, workers, and people who want a simple defensive tool that opens with one hand. Congress criminalized a wide slice of interstate dealing in switchblades. A Fifth Circuit panel has now said the Second Amendment does not allow that ban on the historical showing the government made.
When federal power notes felonies across ordinary arms in common use, courts still have to measure the statute against the constitutional text and the Nation’s regulatory tradition, not against modern policy preferences alone.
