I make my kids watch old movies with me. We recently watched “The Outsiders.”
Sometimes they grumble a bit. “But they’re classics,” I tell them. “They’re useful to your foundational cultural knowledge.”
(And besides, how else are they going to understand when I make a “Brewster’s Millions” reference?! That’s a classic, right?)
When the movie is based on a classic book, I make them read that, too. Like S.E. Hinton’s “The Outsiders.”
So now they are fully steeped in the social turmoil between the upperclass ‘Socs’ and the poor ‘Greasers,’ and they know what a ‘rumble’ is, and they’ll get it when I tell them to “stay gold.”
But I didn’t expect to get to reference it so soon in the context of a legal dispute.
You no doubt remember the scene where Johnny stabbed the drunken ‘Soc’ who was dunking Ponyboy’s head in the fountain. The screenshot below shows the switchblade Johnny used to do it.
I’ve written about knives before. About how they’re protected by the Second Amendment.
About them and Thanksgiving.
I’ve even written about knives and classic movies before! (See my ‘Goonies’ reference!)
So I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I did not know there was a “Federal Switchblade Act.” (15 U.S.C. § 1241 et seq.)
As a kid, I got the sense from The Outsiders that switchblades were some form of contraband, and I recall my dad saying the same thing. But by the time I entered the ATF Academy, many tactical knives were automatic and I carried one for much of my career. Surely Benchmade isn’t flaunting the law, I reasoned. I just assumed (something I do too often) that switchblades being illegal was an urban legend or outdated notion.
Nope. It’s a real law and the U.S. Department of Justice is defending it in court.
I learned about this from Stephen Gutowski’s The Reload newsletter. (See his article here.)
The government’s appellate brief cites many of the old cases we cover in class at William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada-Las Vegas. I’ll use that to reassure students when the semester starts week after next that we aren’t just studying history for history’s sake. It still matters today.
For its part, DOJ has been trying to thread some tiny needles lately, both defending the constitutionality of laws like the Federal Switchblade Act while taking steps to broaden Second Amendment protections in other areas. For instance, it recently conceded that silencers are “arms” (even though they don’t shoot) but still defended their regulation under the National Firearms Act.
As we also discuss in class, sometimes it can be tough to reconcile the internal coherence of various laws.
But that just means lots of fodder for interesting Second Amendment scholarship (and pop culture references in blog posts!).