The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court struck down a nearly 70-year-old law this week, finding it is lawful for its residents to carry switchblades based on Second Amendment protections established through a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.
The commonwealth’s high court reversed a lower court’s denial of a motion to dismiss by the defendant, David E. Canjura, relating to charges of unlawfully possessing a switchblade. The court concluded that a 1957 law banning possession of spring-release pocketknives, commonly referred to as switchblades, violated the right to keep and bear arms preserved in the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, according to a unanimous decision in Commonwealth v. David E. Canjura filed Aug. 27.