Borrowing strategy from NRA, activists quietly overturn knife restrictions across U.S.

[DonViejo]

By Todd C. Frankel

September 15 at 7:43 PM

LAS VEGAS — He ordered the 20-ounce rib-eye, and so the waitress at the upscale restaurant dropped off a wood-handled serrated steak knife. Doug Ritter ignored it. Instead he pulled out a folding knife, its 3.4-inch blade illegal to carry concealed here in Clark County. He flicked it open with one hand. When the steak arrived, medium-rare, he started cutting.

The steak dinner came as Ritter was savoring his many successful attempts at repealing the nation’s knife laws. Decades-old restrictions on switchblades, daggers and stilettos have fallen away in state after state in recent years. Much of this is because of Ritter and his little-known Arizona-based advocacy group Knife Rights, which has used tactics borrowed from the National Rifle Association to rack up legislative victories across the nation. And many of the changes have escaped widespread notice, obscured, in part, by the nation’s focus on guns.

But knife fans know. The morning after his steak dinner, Ritter walked like a celebrity into a major knife convention here.

“Thank you for everything you’re doing for us. Really,” an official with knife maker Ka-Bar told him.

“I live in Louisiana, so thank you,” said another convention-goer, hailing from a state that abandoned its switchblade ban this summer.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/borrowing-strategy-from-nra-activists-quietly-overturn-knife-restrictions-across-us/2018/09/15/3585d724-b789-11e8-94eb-3bd52dfe917b_story.html

[Lars39]

1. This tells me all I need to know...

“Rathner, also a National Rifle Association board member, said lessons learned from the gun rights group have been instrumental.”

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. A lot of those laws, like so many, were based on racism and classism. Switchblade laws are a good

example.