The Maryland knife law angle in the Freddie Gray story

Patrik Jonsson explains at the Christian Science Monitor (via @instapundit). I’ve covered New York’s crazy “gravity knife” law, which has resulted in thousands of prosecutions of otherwise law-abiding New Yorkers, at Cato and Overlawyered; I hadn’t realized that Marylanders, too, at least while in the city of Baltimore, risk arrest for carrying utility knifes accepted as normal in workplaces across much of the country. Jonsson:

The immediate question for investigators is whether that knife [the one carried by Freddie Gray] qualifies as a “switchblade” under Baltimore city statutes, given that Gray’s specimen was not a fully automatic knife. Another is whether, if officers spotted the knife without searching Gray, it could really be considered concealed. Outside of Baltimore, almost any knife can be worn in the state as long as it can be seen by others.

More: Jon Campbell, Village Voice. Update: And see later Overlawyered post (conflicting positions on legal status of knife carried by Gray) and yet more from Jacob Sullum.