CA Bill on Undetectable Knives - AB 1188

[James Mattis]

I just went back into the California Legislature's web page to check on a bill that I'd called and written about before. Here's the latest incarnation of it, as of its 5-0 "yes" vote by the State Senate Public Safety Committee. It has already been passed, a couple of amendments back, by the Assembly, unanimously.

www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/bill/asm/ab_1151-1200/ab_1188_bill_19990707_amended_sen.html

The authorities in this state don't want anybody taking a "CIA Letter Opener" or one of those Mad Dog ceramic knives without the metal insert in the handle into a courthouse here. They were prompted by a guy who stabbed a deputy DA in the neck with a plastic letter opener at his sentencing hearing. She recovered from the stab wound, but he died from the bailiff's 9mm. Suicide by cop.

If you don't like the bill the way it looks now, you would have hated the bill as it was first introduced. The amendments here and there partly, though not completely, address some of the issues I raised, as well as issues raised by the legislative analyst's office. It still would seem to make it illegal to be a flintknapper in California, or to whittle a wooden tent peg here. They do concede that a museum might want a stone knife.

I don't know if any of the knife manufacturers or anybody else have been in contact with the legislature on this.


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- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com
AKTI Member # SA00001

 

[CJ Buck]

Jim

You and I discussed this one a while back and it seemed that the issues were handled by the passage "manufactured to be used as a weapon..." along with a special section for collections was going to answer the "tent peg" concern as well as the collectible stone knives.

To all readers/posters:
Give me some feedback on this. Jan and I are already discussing how to post this to the AKTI website to guide some input to lawmakers.

I am out of town for the week but Jan is also monitoring this thread.

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CJ Buck
Buck Knives, Inc.
AKTI Member #PR00003

 

[James Mattis]

The "manufactured to be used as a weapon" proviso applies to the sale of sharp objects made in other jurisdictions, but not to the manufacture of knives in California itself, so anybody in California who makes a sharp thing would apparently be required to put metal in it, regardless of intent.

The phrase, "capable of ready use as a stabbing weapon . . . " would appear to exempt folding knives with ceramic blades, if "dirk or dagger" case law and legislative intent transfer over to the new statute.

The exemption for collections in the bill only applies to museum or institutional collections with locked cases, and not to private collections, let alone primitive hunters.

Also, there remains the practical problem of figuring out how to obey the proposed law if one does not know the "standard callibration" of a metal detector, or if there is such a thing. Folks in charge of security do not want the public to know what the callibration is, because the knowledge that would enable a knife maker to obey the law is also the knowledge that would enable a bad guy to evade it.


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- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com
AKTI Member # SA00001