Today, Knife Rights Director of Legislative Affairs, Todd Rathner, gave testimony asking the House Civil Rights and Judiciary Committee to amend
SB 5444 to remove "knives." As it stands the bill would make it illegal to possess ANY knife at a "transit station" including bus, train and trolley stops! This would make it illegal to carry a knife on public transit, period, since you can't board without going through a transit station! We need your URGENT help to get "knives" amended out of this BAD BILL!
In speaking to House Committee members, they said they were "well aware" of the emails you have sent on the bill. We need to double down on these emails and we have a new email to go out and we make it easy using our
Legislative Action Center to easily email the Committee members, including the Chair. You must have a Washington address. Go to:
https://kniferights.org/resources/congressweb/#/64
To be clear, chefs would be unable to carry their knife roll. Tradespeople would be unable to carry their knife used at work. Fishers would be unable to carry a knife to clean their catch. The unintended consequences of SB 5444 will especially burden the economically disadvantaged who must use public transit.
While SB 544 is unconstitutional on its face, it is going to get passed. There's simply no way to stop it given the make-up of the Washington legislature. "Parks" were removed in the Senate and the CCW exception was added, making a bad bill, less bad. Now we need to remove "knives" to make this bill even less bad. Making lemonade out of lemons.
PLEASE FORWARD or SHARE this alert to your friends and associates who live in Washington and would support this bill.
