Dangerous Opinion: Hawaii
Second Amendment Knife Case

The Hawai'i Federal District Court has issued an opinion in Teter v. Connors that guts the Second Amendment. The opinion holds that even if butterfly or "balisong" knives are protected by the Second Amendment of the Constitution, a state law banning any possession, manufacture or transport of such knives is constitutionally valid. From the opinion:

The popularity of an all-encompassing class of weapon (the knife, or even the folding knife)is immaterial when only one narrow subset of the class (the butterfly knife) is banned here.The Court declines to treat the ban on butterfly knives—a relatively obscure weapon—the same way the Heller Court viewed the ban on handguns—the "quintessential"self-defense weapon. Doing so would neglect the Supreme Court's emphasis on the regulated weapon at issue—and by extension much of the Court's reasoning that led to its ultimate holding. This case simply does not amount to the same level of "destruction of the [Second Amendment] right" as Heller.

The plaintiffs are appealing the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals.

The District Court opinion shows how appeals courts hostile to the Second Amendment have been successfully salami slicing away Second Amendment rights.

The Supreme Court has been deadlocked and unable or unwilling to protect the exercise of those rights. Without the election of Donald Trump and the appointment of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, the Second Amendment would be dead letter law across the United States. .....