The ‘Gravity Knife’ Led to Thousands of Questionable Arrests. Now It’s Legal. (Published 2019) (2024)

Over the past 60 years, tens of thousands of black and Latino New Yorkers have been arrested for carrying so-called gravity knives — small, easy-to-access blades that are used by everyone from stagehands to steelworkers.

But on Thursday, in another demonstration of New York’s surging progressive wing’s influence, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ended that practice, signing a bill to remove such knives from the category of “deadly weapons,” a designation reserved for guns, daggers and switchblades, and allow their possession.

New York law defines a gravity knife as a knife with the blade in the handle that can be opened with a one‐handed flick of the wrist. They differ from switchblades, which use a spring to propel the blade into an open position automatically with the push of a button.

But critics of the old law said common folding knives and tradespeople’s knives could be deemed gravity knives if an officer was able to flick them open with centrifugal force, and some people had been arrested for possessing ordinary knives they needed for work.

In signing the bill — passed unanimously by the Democratic-led Legislature — the governor cited a March decision from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which found the gravity-knife law “presents a high risk of arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement” and was “unconstitutionally vague.”

The decision was immediately hailed by public defenders and other legal advocates.

The ban and the way it was enforced constituted “one of the most discriminatory policing practices in our state,” said Tina Luongo, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society, which issued a 2018 report showing the racial disparity in the way the law was carried out.