Sports and Crime : Knives: New U.S. Choice of Weapons

The spring-loaded blade of a switch-blade knife flicks open with the push of a button and locks into place with a menacing click. Deadly efficient, it is outlawed in California and most other states.

That, however, has not stopped Patrick Gaffney from earning a tidy income by nationally marketing switch-blade “kits.” For $29.95, the Phoenix, Ariz., knife dealer offers 10 1/2-inch-long, “genuine, automatic” switch-blades sold “in legal kit form.”

Gaffney’s magazine advertisements point out that it takes only a few minutes to fully assemble the kits, but he insists that he encourages his customers not to do so. “These items are intended as collectors items only, not weapons,” he says.

Symbolic of Gangs

Not so long ago, such lethal instruments were relegated almost exclusively to “West Side Story-type guys in leather jackets,” Gaffney concedes. Now, he says, “We sell them to fishermen, hunters, campers. Even elderly people with arthritis like them because they can open them with one hand. I really don’t know why, but these things seem to be taking off on us.”

Indeed, so-called sporting knives of all types are enjoying considerable popularity today. Production among America’s 30 or so knife manufacturers is soaring while sporting knives imported primarily from Japan, Korea, Pakistan and Taiwan are selling in record numbers, according to cutlery industry officials.

In 1983, U.S. consumers spent $155.2 million to buy 45.2 million sporting knives--3.5 million more knives than were purchased the previous year. Most are used for legitimate purposes by outdoorsmen and laborers, manufacturers say.

Other Intentions

But along with those intended for fishermen, hunters and construction workers, there are knives made to be tucked into boots, up sleeves or hidden in belt buckles--wicked stabbing instruments like switch-blades and double-edge daggers with only one purpose: to stab or threaten people, authorities say.

Law enforcement statistics indicate that the percentage of violent crimes involving knives has edged upward to new highs in the United States as the percentage of crimes involving firearms has dropped.

Of the 20,591 homicides that occurred in 1979 in the United States, 19.2% were caused by knives or other cutting instruments. Stabbings accounted for 21.8% of the 18,673 murders in 1983.

Many patrolmen and others are convinced that there are more knives on the street today than ever before.

“Of the cases we see, knife wounds far exceed gunshot wounds,” said Dr. Richard Virgilio, chief trauma surgeon at San Diego’s Mercy Hospital. “It was much the opposite a few years ago.”

Many years ago, beyond the kitchen, the knife was a rural instrument. An American frontiersman, ever wary of bears and Indians, would never venture into the woods without one on his belt.

Farm boys spent idle summer hours playing mumbletypeg, a game in which a folding knife (also called a jack-knife) is tossed so that its blade sticks in the ground.

Today, it seems, the knife in increasing numbers is at home on city streets.

In Los Angeles, a new law became effective this month making it a misdemeanor for anyone to sell, give or lend a minor a fixed- or locking-blade knife with a blade more than two inches in length.

Provisions of Law

With the exception of switch-blades, California law generally imposes no limit on the size or type of knife which may be openly worn in public. Carrying a concealed knife (except if it is a switch-blade or double-edged dagger) is usually legal unless it can be proven that a person is packing it for criminal purposes.

Officer Sergio Diaz, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman, said he believes that two types of urbanites carry knives. One type--”the guy with 48 tattoos on his arm”--wears a knife to scare others. The other type carries a knife “because they’re scared.”

“The guy who’s scared would like to have a gun but there are many more problems there as far as registering the gun and being able to carry it legally, so a knife is the second best thing,” Diaz said. “It’s usually cheaper, you can usually hide it better if you want and it still has a deterrent value just like a gun. It causes a lot of problems for us because if you’re wearing a knife, you’re probably inclined to use it at some point.”

An ordinance approved in New York City in November, 1983, outlawed the open carrying of knives except for “legitimate purposes.” The law also made it a crime to carry a concealed knife with a blade longer than four inches. The punishment if caught and convicted: a $100 fine or 15 days in jail.

Equipment for Times Square

“We found that before the law was passed, the police had to wait for a crime before they could take a knife from somebody--and the police were confiscating more than 3,000 blood-stained knives a week,” said Peter F. Vallone of Queens, the councilman who sponsored the law. “You had weirdos running around Times Square and 42nd Street with Bowie knives on their belts. What the hell were they doing with these things? Chopping trees down?”

They probably could with a Bowie knife, according to custom bladesmith Bill Bagwell of Marietta, Tex. “They could also cut your hand off with one slash,” Bagwell noted.

Bagwell knows all about Bowie knives--the thick, long-bladed weapon made famous in the 1840s by Jim Bowie, hero of the Alamo. One of about 500 custom bladesmiths in the country, Bagwell makes Bowie knives full-time.

His knives, which start at $400, are in big demand. A Bagwell Bowie ordered today will not be delivered until July, 1986. Former Army Col. Charles A. (Chargin’ Charlie) Beckwith, commander of the ill-fated April, 1980, Iran hostage rescue mission, owns a Bagwell knife as do several Hollywood celebrities, professional bodyguards and Alaskan gold miners.

‘Macho Self-Image’

“A knife on your hip looks wicked; it looks military; it helps the macho self-image and you’re not likely to shoot your foot off with it,” said Bagwell, who normally carries a concealed 9 7/8-inch Bowie knife wherever he goes. “Most Americans are looking for a little sugar-coated pill to save them--a crutch--and the knife happens to be it right now.

“We’re seeing a resurgence, I think, because people have the perception that their law enforcement can’t protect them (and) because people are realizing that the knife is a very practical tool. With a good knife, you can build a fire and a shelter or prepare food. The people who buy a quality knife aren’t spending all that money just to stab somebody on the street with it.”

Lewe B. Martin, attorney for the 24-member American Cutlery Manufacturers Assn. based in Washington, D.C., said he believes that sporting knives have received a “bad rap” because of a few knife-wielding criminals.

“It’s sad that our civilization has degenerated to the point where a hunter who goes out to kill a few quail and has his knife handy is placed in the same category as a bank robber,” Martin said. “Certainly, we as an industry do not look kindly upon stabbings, but the truth is that when you sell a knife, you can’t control what’s going to happen with it afterward.”

Like firearms manufacturers who oppose the importation of cheap, easily hidden Saturday Night Special handguns, Martin and others in the cutlery industry contend that stabbings more often than not involve cheap, imported knives designed for offensive purposes only.

Still, there are dozens of American firms that openly offer the types of knives that the cutlery industry opposes:

- A Rockledge, Fla., dealer markets a $79.95, spring-loaded fighting knife that silently fires a blade to a range of 30 feet. “Legal to own,” the dealer promises in his advertisements in Soldier of Fortune magazine. “The Commies had it, we stole it, now you can buy it. The most devastating knife ever produced. The penetration in typical targets is over five times that of a forceful manual stab.”

- Cold Steel Inc., a Ventura-based knife company, offers among its most popular items the stainless steel “Urban Skinner . . . the only serious push dagger commercially available in America.”

At $49.95, the Urban Skinner is touted as “deadly effective and simple to use even if you’ve never picked up a knife before. Use standard boxing blows for phenomenal penetration or mount a slashing attack with the razor sharp, hollow ground blade.”

- Faith Associates Inc., of Hendersonville, N.C., does a brisk mail-order business selling a $2.49 item that resembles an ordinary writing pen. Removing its cap, however, reveals the “pen” to be a steel ice pick-like device. For $1.99, Faith Associates also sells three six-inch spikes that come in a Velcro sheath which wraps around the ankle or wrist.

Popular in San Diego

Police officers routinely encounter these and other bladed weapons. Walking his beat in San Diego’s seedy Gaslamp Quarter on a recent Friday night, Officer Christopher J. Ball stopped six street people and asked each if he were carrying a knife. Half said they were.

A shirtless, off-duty Marine from Camp Pendleton, dressed in jeans and a leather vest, carried on his hip a long GI fighting knife commonly called a “K-Bar.”

“I had this knife in Vietnam,” he explained. “I got an attachment to it.”

Cutlery manufacturers say “survival” knives like the K-Bar gained popularity after the 1982 movie “First Blood,” in which Sylvester Stallone plays a former Army Green Beret who uses his trusty blade and assorted firearms to waste a wicked sheriff.

Buck Knives, among the most venerable names in American bladesmithing, markets a knife, the “BuckMaster,” a 12 5/8-inch-long hunk of gray, sand-blasted steel. It comes with two detachable “anchors” that allow the knife to be used as a grappling hook if need be.

Sales Are Surging

Buck president Charles T. Buck said demand for the BuckMaster is building, as it is for 60 other models of folding and fixed-blade knives that Buck makes.

Three years ago, Buck noted, sagging sales forced him to lay off employees at his 200,000-square-foot plant in El Cajon. Today, his work force is back to full strength. His 360 employees turn out 7,000 knives a day while his sales, which account for nearly one-third of the U.S. sporting knife market, are increasing at an annual rate of 12%.

Buck attributed much of his company’s recent success to an improved national economy. Yet he does not deny that the sporting knife industry is riding a particularly high wave of popularity among American consumers.

“Knives have always been a little intriguing and now I guess they’ve become a little more intriguing,” Buck said. “There has always been a little infamy associated with them and that hasn’t changed.”

Targeting a Market

Buck prides himself on catering to a conservative market. Accordingly, his company avoids marketing devices that can be construed as blatantly offensive, such as knives designed to be hidden in boots or belt buckles. But the company’s philosophy hasn’t stopped its knives from being used occasionally in crime.

Buck admitted that his folding knives intended for hunters and fishermen have also become favorite weapons among some motorcycle gangs, whose members often modify the blades so that they lock open with the flick of a wrist. The knives effectively become switch-blades.

“We don’t like to see that, but there’s not much we can do except void the warranty,” Buck said. “The sad thing is that when you get down to it, you can use just about anything as a weapon. A lot of times, knives just happen to be convenient.”