Washington state’s draconian knife ban bill from last year, SB 5098, has reared its ugly head again, as we told you might happen. The bill failed to get a floor vote before last year’s legislature ended. Now it is back and due to the way Washington’s legislature works, the amendment we worked so hard to insert in the bill to protect knife carriers to a significant extent went away.
The original bill that would ban possession of “any knife” on over 6.5 million acres of public land in Washington, including parks and such, absent the House amendment, has again passed the Democratic controlled Senate by a vote of 29 to 20 and has been sent to the House.
While hardly perfect, the amendment that was added with the support of our friend Representative Mari Leavitt excluded “possessing or controlling a hunting or fishing knife carried for sports use, or a knife commonly used for food preparation, on the premises of a park facility or county fairground.” This is a good amendment, and it will cover a whole lot of knives, and made a very, very bad bill a lot less bad.
Rep. Leavitt has agreed to assist us once again and we will work with her and our other partners in Washington to get that amendment back into the bill as it moves through the legislative process in the House. The amendment isn’t our ideal solution, which would remove the knife ban entirely, but it is far better than nothing in a state with a strong anti-weapon bias in the legislature.
Since 2010 Knife Rights’ efforts have resulted in 58 bills & court decisions repealing knife bans & protecting knife owners in 36 states and over 200 cities and towns! Knife Rights is America’s grassroots knife owners’ organization; leading the fight to Rewrite Knife Law in America™ and forging a Sharper Future for all Americans™.