Butterfly knives on verge of getting final approval to return in Hawai

By Eric Naktin

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    HONOLULU (KITV) — Monday morning the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled against Hawaii’s ban on owning butterfly knives.

A lawsuit had been opened, it went to the Ninth Circuit and the ruling was the ban was constitutional.

With the decision, people who want to own a butterfly knives are a step closer to being able to do so.

Hawaii had put a ban in place back in the 90’s, partially because the weapons were becoming popular in movies, young people and gangs were reportedly using them.

The court felt it wasn’t a good enough reason to ban them.

Andrew Namiki Roberts, Director for the Hawaii Firearms Coalition spoke to KITV4 about this week’s decision regarding butterfly knives.

“They’re not any more dangerous than a pocket knife and as such, Hawaii can not ban them – that appeal has gone back down to the lower court, the state has about fourteen days to respond to that and say whether they want to appeal it to the Ninth Circuit, which would be before a larger panel of the court, and if they don’t do that, essentially the lower court will have to rule that the ban is unconstitutional and people will be able to go out and buy them and own them”, said Roberts.

There’s belief the level of danger is minimal.

Roberts said, “They’re very rarely used in crimes if at all, you can go to the store and buy a kitchen knife which is much larger and much more intimidating – you know it’s not really a problem, they’re no more dangerous than that, it takes a few seconds more to deploy them.”

Beyond the butterfly knife ruling, Roberts added, other laws are going through the Hawaii Ninth Circuit – regarding magazine capacities and switchblades, which will all be coming up very quickly.

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