Donald Wright, 22, died early on Easter morning in 1953 when a teenager stabbed him with a switchblade knife in Pittsburgh\u2019s World War II-era Glen Hazel public housing project. <\/p>\n
Within days, Pittsburgh City Council outlawed switchblades, making the city one of the first in Pennsylvania with an automatic knife ban. A statewide ban followed three years later. <\/p>\n
Automatic knives remained illegal in Pennsylvania until late 2022 when Gov. Tom Wolf and a nearly unanimous legislature brought them back, caught up in a knife-rights wave sweeping the nation. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just kind of silly,\u201d said John Sullivan, who served on the American Knife and Tool Institute\u2019s board of directors, which counts repealing automatic knife bans as one its top priorities. \u201cSomebody could be traveling to a Bass Pro shop or something in Tennessee and buy a knife and then go home and have it be illegal.\u201d <\/p>\n
Many bans against automatic knives date to the 1950s when a moral panic swept the United States as journalists and legislators, partly fueled by Hollywood and a popular Broadway show, clamored to stigmatize and criminalize switchblades, experts said.<\/p>\n
A NewsWorks Lab analysis of crime data shows that the number of knife crimes remains low compared to those involving handguns and firearms \u2013 and remains relatively unchanged in Pennsylvania since the ban was lifted.<\/p>\n
People use knives to commit about 1,500 homicides in the United States annually, according to a 2022 National Institutes of Health study<\/a>. By comparison, people used handguns and firearms to commit 8,580 murders last year, according to FBI data.<\/a> <\/p>\n Law enforcement data do not break down whether the type of knife used was an automatic one or other knife type. <\/p>\n In Pennsylvania, 38 people used a knife to commit a murder in 2021, the year before the ban was lifted; last year, 38 people used a knife to kill someone \u2013 although the overall number of murders declined by a third to 414, the FBI records show. <\/p>\n Pittsburgh data<\/a> show knives were used in five violent incidents in 2025, compared to four in 2021; the number of homicides dropped to one last year from three the year before the ban was lifted. <\/p>\n \u201cI spoke with a lieutenant in our Violent Crimes Division, and he was not aware of anyone being charged with being in possession of a switchblade anytime recently,\u201d Pittsburgh Public Safety spokesperson Cara Cruz wrote in an emailed response to questions. \u201cIf it was decriminalized by the state, Pittsburgh Police wouldn\u2019t enforce a city ordinance on it.\u201d <\/p>\n Knife experts and enthusiasts said switchblades are no more dangerous than ordinary folding knives. Because switchblades typically have smaller blades of four to five inches long, they might be less deadly than a longer bayonet or Bowie knife, historian Clayton Cramer said. <\/p>\n \u201cOnce it\u2019s extended, there\u2019s really no difference than the other short knife,\u201d he said. \u201cThe lethality of a knife is generally dependent on the length of the blade.\u201d<\/p>\n Pittsburgh ban<\/p>\n Wright\u2019s murder in 1953 provided the catalyst for Pittsburgh\u2019s switchblade ban. <\/p>\n According to testimony by Wright\u2019s friend James Burke, Wright was sitting with him on a wall in front of Wright\u2019s Glen Hazel home at 12:15 am. Wright, who was white, allegedly heard a rock being thrown against a nearby house. <\/p>\n He and his friend then saw a group of boys running down the street. The ensuing fistfight turned deadly when Clayton Woodrow Covington, who was Black, stabbed Wright with a $5 switchblade knife. <\/p>\n Newspapers dubbed Covington the \u201cswitchblade slayer\u201d and the group he was with that night a \u201cgang.\u201d Covington pleaded guilty and in September 1953 was sentenced to the Camp Hill juvenile detention facility. <\/p>\n It took five months for the criminal case against Covington to conclude. In the court of public opinion and in Pittsburgh City Council chambers, however, a swifter verdict was rendered against switchblade knives. <\/p>\n A coroner\u2019s inquest had recommended a grand jury indictment against Covington. <\/p>\n \u201cWe also recommend that the Legislature of Pennsylvania take immediate action to make it illegal to sell or possess switchblade knives, and also to make it illegal to carry long-bladed knives of any kind,\u201d reads the coroner\u2019s jury verdict released April 23, 1953. <\/p>\n Pittsburgh City Solicitor Anne X. Alpern sent a draft ordinance to the Pittsburgh City Council on May 11, 1953. Council approved the measure two weeks later, and Mayor David Lawrence signed it into law June 5. <\/p>\n Wright\u2019s murder also spurred South Side Democrat Elmer J. Holland to introduce a bill in the Pennsylvania Senate April 13, 1953, banning automatic knives, specifically switchblades. In a speech to his Senate colleagues, Holland described Wright\u2019s murder. <\/p>\n \u201cIn Pittsburgh last week, a man was stabbed to death by a gang of boys who were terrorizing the community,\u201d Holland said. \u201cOne of the male resident [sic] of the community went out to protest the gang of boys. One of the boys immediately pulled a switchblade knife and buried the blade into the heart of that man.\u201d <\/p>\n Despite the high emotions and support in the Senate, Holland\u2019s bill didn\u2019t become law. <\/p>\n Three years later, in 1956, the push to ban switchblades reignited as cities such as Philadelphia, Lancaster and Reading passed ordinances outlawing the knives. The statewide ban easily passed in both houses, and Pennsylvania Governor George Leader signed it into law on April 4, 1956. <\/p>\n Pennsylvania became one of 40 states at the time to fully or partially ban the sale and possession of automatic knives. In 1958, Congress passed the federal Switchblade Act, making it illegal to manufacture switchblades to be transported and sold across state lines.<\/p>\n Long history<\/p>\n Switchblade knives were invented long before lawmakers started banning them.<\/p>\n They originated in Europe in the 18th century when English, German and Spanish craftsmen made the first automatic knives, according to Richard Langston\u2019s 2001 book, \u201cThe Collector\u2019s Guide to Switchblade Knives.\u201d <\/p>\n Mass production in factories using standardized parts after the Civil War made it possible to manufacture and sell more automatic knives. In 1883, George W. Korn of New York City received a patent for a pocketknife that included what he called a \u201cfly-opener\u201d and a lock, which allowed a user to release a spring-loaded blade by pressing on a lever in the handle. <\/p>\n Korn was a German immigrant who moved to Chicago and then Little Valley, N.Y., where he founded the Korn Razor Co. <\/p>\n George Schrade, another inventor, received a patent in 1892 for an improved pocketknife featuring a blade that opened automatically and that locked in place while open and closed. Schrade\u2019s factory in Walden, N.Y., became one of the first places to mass produce switchblades. <\/p>\n Additional knife works soon began competing with Schrade, including W.R. Case & Sons Cutlery Co. in Bradford. Founded in 1889 in Little Valley, N.Y., where Korn had his factory, Case relocated in 1905. It still makes knives \u2014 but not switchblades.<\/p>\n Popular culture<\/p>\n Historians and knife aficionados agree the criminalization of automatic knives happened very quickly, between 1950 and 1958, and that popular Hollywood movies, news reports and one Broadway show helped sensationalize the knives and crimes tied to them. <\/p>\n Doug Ritter, the founder of Knife Rights, a nationwide group that works to overturn automatic knife bans, blames one journalist in particular: Jack Pollack wrote an article titled the \u201cThe Toy That Kills\u201d<\/a> in the November 1950 issue of Woman\u2019s Home Companion, which went out of print in 1957. <\/p>\n \u201cThis new threat to our children\u2019s safety is a pocketknife called a switchblade,\u201d Pollack wrote. <\/p>\n He focused on the speed that blades are released and painted a picture of switchblade knives as tools with one purpose: to maim and kill people. <\/p>\n Historian Cramer and legal experts who have written about knife laws point to movies such as \u201cRebel Without a Cause\u201d and \u201cBlackboard Jungle,\u201d both of which came out in 1955, and the musical, \u201cWest Side Story,\u201d which opened on Broadway in 1957. <\/p>\n \u201cThe problem is with almost everything that Hollywood does,\u201d Cramer said, \u201cif there\u2019s some way to make it more exciting and more interesting to look at, they will do that.\u201d <\/p>\n Television played a role too. On the eve of Pennsylvania banning automatic knives in 1956, the Philadelphia Inquirer\u2019s new TV critic Harry Harris wrote in his first column about violence, and specifically switchblades. He inventoried all the violence he witnessed in a single day\u2019s viewing. <\/p>\n \u201cDeep-dyed villains of various sizes and shapes committed more acts of violence than we could count,\u201d Harris wrote. \u201cActual deaths included 12 by shooting, two by stabbing \u2026 There were numerous mere woundings, via guns, switchblade knives [and] daggers.\u201d <\/p>\n New Jersey attorney Paul Clark, who studies the history of knife criminalization and has written legal journal articles about switchblades and bayonets, said knife bans date even earlier. <\/p>\n He connects them to cultural biases such as earlier English laws against the sgian dubh, or \u201cblack knife,\u201d that Scottish Highlanders traditionally wear, and the dirk, a longer Scottish blade. <\/p>\n \u201cWay back in the 1700s, for instance, certain traditional Scottish weapons were banned, and they\u2019re still banned,\u201d Clark said. \u201cIn New Jersey, it is illegal to possess a sgian.\u201d <\/p>\n Clark, like others who say switchblade bans unfairly target specific groups, said he thinks that Black people were falsely associated with automatic knives too. <\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt, there\u2019s a long, long history of this where majorities see a minority group that they don\u2019t like,\u201d he said. \u201cThey see something associated with that minority group and say, we\u2019ve we got to punish that.\u201d<\/p>\n Lawmakers unite<\/p>\n State Rep. Martin Causer, a Republican from Turtlepoint, Pa., who represents parts of the state\u2019s most rural communities, and state Sen. Sharif Street, a Philadelphia Democrat in the state\u2019s largest city, found themselves on the same side of legalizing automatic knives. <\/p>\n Causer\u2019s district comprises parts of Cameron, McKean and Potter counties along Pennsylvania\u2019s border with New York. It also includes the Case knife-manufacturing company. <\/p>\n Sullivan, who was the company\u2019s director of sales and marketing, had reached out to the lawmaker. <\/p>\n \u201cIt started with a meeting that I had with officials at Case,\u201d Causer told NewsWorks Lab. \u201cThey brought to my attention that automatic knives were prohibited from decades ago, and that the prohibition was putting them at a disadvantage from other states.\u201d <\/p>\n Ritter\u2019s group, Knife Rights, is also part of the loose coalition that has successfully lobbied to repeal knife bans in more than 40 states. Their efforts gained momentum in 2008 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case District of Columbia v. Heller that private citizens, not just militias as written in the Second Amendment, could possess ordinary weapons. <\/p>\n Ritter formed Knife Rights after reading a Wall Street Journal article<\/a> 20 years ago. <\/p>\n \u201cI realized that there was no organization here that would fight the demonization of knives in general and things like switchblades in particular,\u201d Ritter told NewsWorks Lab.<\/p>\n Causer\u2019s bill to eliminate the automatic knife ban was working its way through the Pennsylvania legislature in 2021 and 2022, around the same time Street introduced a Senate bill that focused on social justice. <\/p>\n Street wrote in a 2021 memo when he introduced his bill that the ban led to higher arrests of Black Pennsylvanians carrying automatic knives: \u201cThis is especially true for young Black men who are more likely to be stopped by police.\u201d <\/p>\n The Pennsylvania House approved Causer\u2019s bill, 202 to 1 \u2013 with Delaware County Republican Rep. Christopher Quinn casting the lone dissent \u2013 and the Senate unanimously approved it. Gov. Wolf signed the bill into law on Nov. 3, 2022, and it went into effect 60 days later. <\/p>\n Today, only two states \u2013 Minnesota and New Mexico<\/a> \u2013 still prohibit the possession, purchase and sale of automatic knives, according to the American Knife and Tool Institute<\/a>. <\/p>\n