Our View: Congress gets it right on knives

Most of us probably don't say it enough, but Congress does, actually, do some good things. Although it's easy to criticize members when they step outside their constitutional limits, we often fail to recognize them when they make the right decisions. With that in mind, this page tips its hat to members of the House and Senate who recognized a new Customs and Border Patrol definition of switchblades and gravity knives would essentially outlaw a majority of the pocket and hunting knives used in this country every day, and left that definition out of the 2010 Homeland Security Appropriations bill.

The proposed definition would have reclassified any knife that could be opened with one hand as a switchblade in federal law. The action would have banned the importation of such knives, and because most state and local laws regarding knives use the federal definitions for local enforcement, the move would have effectively outlawed approximately 80 percent of the folding knives sold in the United States.

Defeating the proposal was the result of a grass-roots effort, led by kniferights.org and the American Tool and Knife Institute and supported by numerous outdoor recreation organizations. That effort convinced Congress that the proposal would be unduly restrictive and not add much, if anything, to national security.

Removing the Customs and Border Patrol proposal from the appropriations bill was the right move because it allows workers and outdoor recreationists to choose the tools that work best for them. It doesn't take much imagination to envision numerous circumstances in which one would have only one free hand with which to open a knife when one was needed.

Ideally, of course, the 1958 Switchblade Act would be repealed. It was enacted during a time of fear that was based on over-the-top charactericzations of street gangs being armed with switchblades. Other than simple pandering to fear, it's difficult to imagine a reason to ban a type of knife simply because of the way one opens the blade; is a switchblade inherently more dangerous than one that must be opened with two hands? Knives are dangerous in the hands of dangerous people, regardless of how they're opened. Laws should address the actions of people, not tools they choose to misuse.