The ability to produce and use tools is what has enabled humans to rise from a very primitive existence and adapt to almost every climate or situation existing on this earth. Granted, we have superior intellectual and reasoning ability. Intelligence enabled them to fashion stones, bones, and other material into increasingly efficient tools. Knives, in the nascent form of naturally occurring sharp-edged stones, were undoubtedly among the first tools they ever used. We should consider that without these tools, the dietary and wardrobe options available to our ancestors would have been quite limited.
Knives are indeed tools.
Occasionally, knives are employed as weapons, both defensively and offensively. Unfortunately, knives are also occasionally used to commit crimes. It is the potential that knives can be used criminally and perhaps a misperception as to the frequency of criminal use that has given rise to laws regulating knives in essentially every state. Our Federal government became involved in firearms regulation in the early part of this century and continues to assume an increasing level of control as to firearms. Given the relatively long period of Federal involvement, the doctrine of Federal preemption, and the fact that firearms laws are for the most part based on purely objective factors, such as barrel length or action type, there is a greater degree of consistency among the laws of the various states as to firearms.