If a folding knife has a blade less than 3 inches long is it legal to carry in your pocket in the UK?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “1.5 inch pocket knife“
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Written by: Raelynn
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If a folding knife has a blade less than 3 inches long is it legal to carry in your pocket in the UK?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “1.5 inch pocket knife“
About Raelynn
Folding knives that do not lock open and have blades of 3″ or less are legal to carry in the UK. I still wouldn’t carry one.
UK knife law is based on the idea that you have to have a compelling reason to carry a knife, as opposed to U.S. law, which is based on the idea that the government has to have a compelling reason to keep you from carrying a knife. Right now, and for some time, the UK has been cracking down on “knife crime.” You, a law-abiding citizen, carrying a Swiss Army knife, are an easier arrest for an unarmed policeman to make than a drunk National Front skinhead with a box cutter in his back pocket.
Good luck.
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It is, but if you use it aggressively against someone, the Police will arrive, ask you to drop the weapon, and if you do not comply, taser you. On the other hand I have had a Swiss Army knife in my pocket for at least forty years, and been stopped a few times, usually for some other reason, and sometimes the police have tried to make an issue of it, but it is something I use two or three times a day, not always the knife bit, as it has so much more than the blade that is useful. The last time I was in court the security guard stopped me and was getting quite upset that I had two Swiss Army knives in my pocket, but the explanation was true. My usual knife had been lost, so I stuffed one of my others in my pocket, a few weeks before, but as I was getting out of my car I had spotted the other one in the rails of the front seat, fished it out and stuffed it in my pocket without thinking, and after the court intended to slay the fatted calf as it were (by the way the reason I was in court was only part of the never ending saga of my divorce!) The knives were duly returned to me as I left the court.
I also have in my desk drawer a knife that is illegal for me to carry in the UK. When I lived in France in the 1990s a couteau was a normal thing to carry, razor sharp, and something to use when you were eating outside. French bread gets a bit tough after a few hours in a car, so the knives need to be sharp! All of my friends then carried them as a matter of course, so when I went to Belgium a couple of years age. I was delighted to find the local paper shop/bookinist/ papeterie sold them, so I bought one The blade is three and a half inches long, so if a policeman comes into my home and finds it, I think I may need to draw his attention to the bit on the side that says “ La Roche en Ardennes”, otherwise I might have to point out to him that there are much, much longer knives in my kitchen, that are sharper than that one, and are designed to cut flesh!
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The law can be as simple or complicated as you choose to make it. Mark Seiffer has pretty much shown how simple it can be. The simplest way of avoiding falling foul of the law in this matter is to just not carry one at all. If you are found in possession of almost any bladed article, the Police are quite entitled to ask why you have it on you.
To show how complicated it can be, the fact that it is not illegal to carry one, doesn’t make it totally legal. For instance, you go on a camping trip and among your tools: stove, tent, sleeping bag etc., is a 3″ folding (non-locking) knife. You could have a perfectly reasonable justification for having it.
In a busy Pub on a Friday night? At a football match? When about to board an aircraft??
Even if you use a knife in the conduct of your employment, such as a butcher, why would you carry it around unless you’d just bought it, in which case you’d have a receipt and it would almost certainly be in a bag? Even if you were going to have it sharpened it would be enclosed in something. I can’t imagine that someone would think it a good idea to walk down the street with a shotgun over their shoulder just because they were taking it to be repaired.
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tl:dr answer – yes, so long as the folding knife does not have a locking mechanism.
Legally, the use of knives in the UK is constrained by three separate parliamentary acts. The Knives Act restricts sales of knives to over-18s, and highlights places where the possession of any knife is illegal (courtrooms, airport departure lounges, etc). The Offensive Weapons Act bans possession, sale, or use of restricted knives (switchblades, gravity knives, etc) and sets out to define ‘offensive’ behaviour with regard to all knives (as in, if you are nuts enough to run screaming down the street threatening to gut someone like a fish with your Swiss Army Knife, that Swiss Army Knife just became an offensive weapon.
Finally, there’s the Criminal Justice Act. This defines what can and cannot be carried in daily life. Presently, in terms of knives, that means a folding, non-locking pocket knife with a cutting edge of three inches or less. Anything outside of that description is legal to own and use, but would not be lega…
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