Supreme Court: No Protection for Paring Knife

Posted Thursday, December 31, 2015 by Andrew Charles Huff

A local man challenged a Seattle law prohibiting him from carrying a small, fixed-blade“paring” knife for the purpose of self-defense, arguing the law violates his right to bear arms under the 2nd Amendment and State Constitution.

The threshold question for the Court was whether Wayne Evans demonstrated that his fixed-blade knife is a protected arm” under the Washington or federal constitution. The court had previously held that similar knives were not “arms and did not deserve protection. However, a prior U.S. Supreme Court decision strengthened the 2nd Amendment’s application and Mr. Evans argued that based on that decision, the Seattle Ordinance violated his rights.

But our State Court found that the small knife on Mr. Evans’s person is a utility tool, not a weapon. While conceding that almost any common object may be used as a weapon, this knife or tool does not trigger the constitutional protections afforded to “arms” and upheld Seattle’s law prohibiting him from carrying the knife