Draconian Hawaii Knife Ban Bill Stopped!

News Release from Knife Rights, February 14, 2025

That draconian Hawaii Knife Ban bill, SB 433, has been stopped, failing to receive a hearing by deadline! Knife Rights Director of Legislative Affairs, Todd Rathner, flew to Hawaii and lobbied at the Capitol, explaining to Senators just how badly this proposed bill would impact ordinary Hawaiians. SB 433 would have absolutely banned carry, open or concealed, of most knives, and all knives in many public places in Hawaii!

We are very appreciative of the support we received from a number of our good friends in Hawaii. Thanks, also, to all the Hawaiians who responded to our call for assistance and contacted their legislators or helped Todd make contact with Senators. We’d like to especially thank Todd Yukutake, Co-Founder of the Hawaii Firearms Coalition, and also Knife Rights member Sam Mitchell who shepherded Todd around to numerous meetings with Senators at the Capitol.

Together we stopped this terrible bill from moving, a huge victory for all Hawaiians. This is the twelfth anti-knife bill that Knife Rights has stopped. Stopping a bad bill is almost more important than repealing bad knife laws. A knife ban bill passed sets an awful precedent that other states might follow. We definitely can’t stand for that and with your continued support Knife Rights will always step up for the fight!

(L-R) Todd at the Capitol and with Sen. Lynn DeCoite, Assistant Majority Floor Leader, and Sen. Kurt Fevella.

It was a big, unexpected, unbudgeted expense to send Todd to Hawaii on such short notice. This WIN came at considerable cost. Please consider making a donation today to help cover this expense!

Background:

Only months after celebrating the repeal of Hawaii’s bans on butterfly, switchblade and gravity knives, and more, legislators introduced SB 433 that would absolutely ban carry, open or concealed, of most knives, and all knives in many public places in Hawaii!

The proposed bans were unquestionably unconstitutional under the Bruen Second Amendment precedent, but the Ninth Circuit just gave another middle finger to the Supreme Court’s guidance. As you can read below or at this link, the en banc court essentially upheld the vacatur of the panel decision that voided Hawaii’s original butterfly knife ban on Second Amendment grounds. This leaves Hawaii free to once again ban knives.

While the bill appeared to carve out an exception for butterfly knives and switchblades, which might seem like a good thing and a boon to those making them, in reality it would have created one of the most egregious and far-reaching knife bans ever. The bill added “bladed weapons” to Hawaii’s sweeping firearms bans, which would have been, in fact, expanded in this bill.

One of the worst aspects of the bill was its vagueness. As written, nobody, not a resident, not a police officer, not a prosecutor, could possibly look at the proposed statute and know for sure what is a “bladed weapon” that is being banned. This is fundamentally unconstitutional and leaves the law open for law enforcement and prosecutorial abuse. Terms that capture everyday tools carried daily by the public for perfectly lawful uses should be defined crisply and clearly to provide fair notice as required by longstanding law.

The bill banned undefined “bladed weapons” everywhere in Hawaii except for switchblades and butterfly knives. So, a not at all unreasonable interpretation of this term would have banned carry of a common pocket knife in Hawaii, except for those two specific types! Who decides whether it’s a “bladed weapon?” Certainly not the average resident or visitor. As some other examples, fillet knives used for recreational, subsistence and commercial fishing, dive knives and hunting knives used for boar hunting (a popular means of reducing feral hog populations on the islands and a popular tourist business) could have been banned as could a box cutter carried by a warehouse worker to work.

However, switchblades and butterfly knives that are otherwise legal to carry would have also been banned in “sensitive location(s)” which is so sweepingly broad it would have outlawed the possession of these knives at a family event at a state park (51 covering 30,000+ acres) or a parent picking their child up from school. The breadth of the bill’s scope was way beyond anything we’d seen before.

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™. Knife Rights efforts have resulted in 50 bills enacted repealing knife bans in 31 states and over 200 cities and towns since 2010.

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SB433: Text, Status