Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Legendary Self-Defense Expert Outlines How Using Knife For Self-Defense Affects You In Court

Wisconsin Supreme Court (Royalbroil/Wikimedia Commons)

An incident where a would-be victim using pepper spray and a knife thwarted a carjacker in Prince George’s County, Maryland, reminds us that guns are not the only items that are considered “arms.”

However, how might a court look at using something other than a firearm in self-defense, as was the case in Maryland? We asked Second Amendment Foundation President Massad Ayoob, who has decades of experience as a law enforcement officer, firearms instructor and an expert witness in the use of force for self-defense.

“It’s kind of a cultural thing, and it goes back to 18th, 19th century,” Ayoob told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Historically, the pistol was seen as the weapon that would be chosen by the lady or the gentleman and the knife and the club were seen as the weapons of the thug and there’s a little bit of that yet today.”

In the August 16 incident, a 17-year-old tried to force an older Lyft driver identified as Alice to give up her car at knifepoint, WJLA, a Washington, D.C., area TV Station, reported. The driver feigned compliance, but instead of handing over her key, she retrieved a can of pepper spray given to her by her father and sprayed the carjacker in the face.

The driver then pulled out a knife of her own, and the would-be carjacker fled the scene, to later be taken into custody by police, still suffering from the effects of the pepper spray. Ayoob noted that the encounter contained two instances of “disparity of force,” which he defined as “an advantage on one side, that even though the person is ostensibly unarmed, if the assault continues, it’s reasonable to believe that death or crippling injury could ensue and that would warrant a deadly force response in self-defense.“

“The male is generally larger and stronger and is generally seen as having more cultural predispositioning to violence,” Ayoob told the DCNF. He also said the relative ages could come into play.

“He’s in physical prime of life, and she’s not, so that’s basically two elements of disparity of force,” Ayoob said. “That makes you be quite defensible.”

The Supreme Court, in its chain of Second Amendment jurisprudence, noted in Heller, Caetano and Bruen that “arms” were not just limited to firearms, it actually included “instruments that constitute bearable arms,” including knives, pepper spray and stun guns.

The high court noted in those cases that the Second Amendment didn’t just extend to firearms. Prior to firearms becoming commonly accessible, though, knives were often the preferred weapon for those carrying something to protect themselves.

“In the medieval period, ‘[a]lmost everyone carried a knife or a dagger in his belt,’” Associate Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the Bruen opinion, citing the 2001 book “Daggers and Fighting Knives of the Western World.” “While these knives were used by knights in warfare, ‘[c]ivilians wore them for self-protection,’ among other things.”

“Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding,” former Associate Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the Heller opinion.

Ayoob noted that while there were factors that worked in favor of the armed citizen who fought back against the would-be carjacker, anyone acting in self-defense should keep one thing in mind.

“Anytime someone’s injured or killed, it’s possible to bring [an armed citizen] in front of the grand jury,” Ayoob told the DCNF.