The new law declared that the definition of a switchblade knife does not include a knife that is designed to open with one hand utilizing thumb pressure applied solely to the blade of the knife or a thumb stud attached to the blade. We thought this battle had been won. AKTI board members were informed of this new threat while in their annual meeting. That very day, February 17 th , they voted to retain the lobbyist firm that worked on the earlier exemption. At the meeting, AKTI learned that CDAA had two concerns.
Police officers didn t want to be surprised by easily opened knives in encounters with gang members.
And the Ventura County DA didn t want to be haunted by the prospect of gang members getting back their confiscated knives and believing that carrying these cheap, easily-opened imports made them exempt from the switchblade law. AKTI representatives succeeded in getting CDAA to pull back from its original goal of striking the exemption. CDAA agreed to accept one-hand knives with a bias toward closure as falling within the current exemption. CDAA also agreed to poll all its members to gauge statewide problems with switchblade prosecutions. For its part, AKTI agreed to review possible alternative language presented to them that would continue to protect one-hand knives with a bias toward closure while giving DAs and judges more power to add penalties for using knives in the commission of crimes.