NEW ORLEANS — The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit delivered a major Second Amendment victory on Wednesday, October 21, declaring that switchblade knives are “arms” protected by the Second Amendment and that the Federal Switchblade Act regulating these knives is unconstitutional.
Writing on behalf of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the three-judge panel (Chief Judge Elrod, along with Judges Willett and Wilson) issued a unanimous decision in favor of the plaintiffs in Knife Rights, Inc. v. Blanche. The case was on appeal out of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
The court granted plaintiffs a victory on the Second Amendment challenge, but not their facial challenge, allowing that bans can still remain in certain places such as courthouses, federal prisons, embassies, and military bases.
Knives are one of the world’s oldest and most-used offensive and defensive weapons, perhaps preceded only by blunt force objects such as clubs. As with firearms, totalitarian-oriented officials argue that technological innovations should allow governments to restrict and prohibit access to arms.
This is exactly the case with switchblade knives, which the federal government effectively banned in 1958 by passing H.R. 12850, later becoming the Federal Switchblade Act, making it a crime if a person “knowingly introduces, or manufactures for introduction, into interstate commerce, or transports or distributes in interstate commerce, any switchblade knife.”
The panel applied the Bruen test, under which it determined that “switchblade knives qualify as ‘Arms’ and are covered by the ‘plain text’ of the Second Amendment. 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.”
Notably, the law was passed under the commerce power of Congress, a clever way to regulate without technically – at least through statute – prohibiting the sale or possession of switchblades. Yet, the intended outcome is exactly to prohibit sale and possession, as the court noted:
The question, then, is whether this right to have and carry weapons extends to the procurement of weapons such that it would implicate Section 1242’s prohibition on the introduction, manufacture, transportation, or distribution of switchblades into interstate commerce. We conclude that it does.
The court also acknowledged that “switchblades are arms commonly used for defense and manufacturing and procuring them facilitates using them for defense.”
The opening of the decision recounted the colorful mid-20th century media and movie treatment of the cultural landscape in which switchblades became both popular and villainized, eventually cast as objects “associated with criminal activity.” The court also observed that the measure attempted to deal with “perceived societal problem[s],” an approach that the Supreme Court rejected in Bruen.
The court reversed the district court’s grant of the government’s motion to dismiss as to the Section 1242 claim, affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the Section 1243 claim, and remanded back to the district court for further proceedings.
The Decision, the DOJ, and the Current Environment
Most significant in this case is the lingering question as to whether the government will appeal. The previous DOJ, under Pam Bondi, argued aggressively that switchblades are “not entitled to Second Amendment protection,” as recently as December 2025.
If the Blanche DOJ follows the Civil Rights Division’s lead on Second Amendment issues, this publication would expect it to forgo an appeal.
The outcome of this case may also provide significant legal precedent for other cases, such as a recently filed case out of New Jersey challenging the state’s blanket ban on all “weapons.”
Additionally, the Fifth Circuit’s decision creates a split of sorts with the Ninth Circuit, which upheld California’s state-level ban on switchblades in January.
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