Here’s the only Baltimore code I can find on knives:
“It shall be unlawful for any person to sell, carry, or possess any knife with an automatic spring or other device for opening and/or closing the blade, commonly known as a switch-blade knife.”
So what is an “automatic spring?” To ming mind it pretty clearly means you push a button or flip a lever and the knife opens automatically. That’s not the way these knives work. You open it manually, just with a spring to assist.
Which is not to say a court will take this common-sense position.
This is my last post on this topic.
Since everyone is reading the Statute so closely and are saying that because there is no button to “spring open” the knife, therefore it is not a switchblade and legal...
Answer me this...the Statute also says “and/or closing the blade”. Can anyone tell me where the button is on a switch-blade to spring-assist the closure of the blade?
In over 20 years of law enforcement I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a knife “commonly known as a switch-blade knife” have a spring-assist to CLOSE the blade.
Yet if you follow the Statute literally, to be an illegal knife in Baltimore, the knife must have a spring-assist or other device to open AND close...OR closing the blade.
Obviously, taken literally, the Statute is “less than perfect” which is why the Court will probably resort to case law to see what is the common definition of a spring-assisted knife.