NJ Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Edged Weapons as “Arms”

By AmmoLand Editor Duncan Johnson

New Jersey –-(Ammoland.com)- The decision is from the case State v. Montalvo where defendant Crisoforo Montalvo was convicted of unlawful possession of a weapon for greeting an aggressive and threatening neighbor at the door with a machete in his hand. The New Jersey Supreme Court remanded the case for retrial, but there is a larger significance to the ruling.

Highly regarded Second Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh describes this significance in his piece for the Washington Post.

The New Jersey machete decision is important because it rejects a “spontaneity” requirement for arming yourself at home (the state’s theory that you could pick up a weapon against an imminent attack, but you can’t come to the door with the weapon just in case). But it’s also important because it reaffirms that the Second Amendment protects not just guns but other weapons as well.

This should be obvious, I think: The Second Amendment protects “arms,” and the D.C. v. Heller opinion discusses bows and knives as examples of such arms; opinions in the 1800s and 1900s dealing with state …Read the Rest

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