Pennsylvania Knife Laws: Automatics, Carry Rules and Philadelphia

The Short Version

Pennsylvania has no permit for knives, no blade length limit, no age limit and no difference between open and concealed carry. Its one knife statute, 18 Pa.C.S. § 908, works by list: it names the "offensive weapons" no one may make, sell, repair, use or possess, and since Act 119 of 2022 took effect in January 2023 that list contains no knife of any kind. Automatics, daggers, bowies, butterfly knives and fixed blades of any size are legal to own and carry anywhere in the state outside a K-12 school and a court facility. What is left is intent: § 907 makes it a crime to carry any concealed weapon "with intent to employ it criminally." Metal knuckles are still banned. Philadelphia's ordinance against carrying any "cutting weapon" on a public street is still printed in the city code, but the city agreed in federal court in 2023 that it cannot enforce it.

What Changed in 2023

For 66 years the offensive weapons definition in § 908(c) included any "dagger, knife, razor or cutting instrument, the blade of which is exposed in an automatic way by switch, push-button, spring mechanism, or otherwise." Possessing an automatic was a first-degree misdemeanor, with a defense if you could prove you held it "solely as a curio or in a dramatic performance." House Bill 1929 became Act 119 on November 3, 2022 and took effect 60 days later. It rewrote the definition so that it now reads: "Any bomb, grenade, machine gun, sawed-off shotgun with a barrel less than 18 inches, firearm specially made or specially adapted for concealment or silent discharge, any blackjack, sandbag, metal knuckles, any stun gun, stun baton, taser or other electronic or electric weapon or other implement for the infliction of serious bodily injury which serves no common lawful purpose."

Read it twice: the words dagger, knife, razor and cutting instrument are gone entirely, not only the automatic clause. The Legislature did not simply legalize switchblades. It took knives out of the statute. The one phrase that could still reach a knife is the catch-all, "other implement for the infliction of serious bodily injury which serves no common lawful purpose," and a knife that cuts rope, boxes, food and cord has a common lawful purpose by definition. Before 2023 that catch-all was used against swords and push daggers now and then, and it did not change in 2023, so a sword or a push dagger still deserves more caution than a pocketknife. With knives deliberately struck from the list, a prosecutor arguing that a working knife belongs under it is arguing against the amendment.

What You Can Carry

Everything. Folding knives of any length, fixed blades, hunting knives, daggers, dirks, stilettos, double-edged blades, bowies, machetes, swords, butterfly knives, gravity knives, assisted openers, side-opening automatics and OTF automatics are all legal to buy, own and carry in Pennsylvania, openly or concealed, on your person or in your vehicle, with no permit and no length rule. The state firearms license has nothing to do with knives, and there is no knife equivalent. Out-of-state visitors are covered by the same statute as residents, so there is no reciprocity question. Disguised knives such as pen and belt buckle knives are not named in the statute either, and swords and push daggers carry the one caution above about the catch-all.

The only state rule that attaches to ordinary carry is § 907(b): "A person commits a misdemeanor of the first degree if he possesses a firearm or other weapon concealed upon his person with intent to employ it criminally." The section defines a weapon as "anything readily capable of lethal use and possessed under circumstances not manifestly appropriate for lawful uses which it may have." Both halves have to be proved: concealment and criminal intent. A knife clipped to your pocket on the way to work satisfies neither. The charge exists for the person who brings a knife to a fight, and it is the charge that appears on the docket when a knife is involved in an assault or a robbery.

What You Cannot Carry

Metal knuckles. They are still an offensive weapon under § 908, and so is any knife with a knuckle-duster handle, because the knuckles are the problem rather than the blade. Possessing one, selling one or repairing one is a first-degree misdemeanor, with the curio and dramatic performance defense available if you can prove it by a preponderance of the evidence. Blackjacks, sandbags, stun guns carried outside the self-defense exceptions in § 908.1, and the firearms and explosives on the list are the rest of it. No knife is named.

Open Carry, Concealed Carry and Blade Length

Pennsylvania does not distinguish between a knife carried openly and one carried concealed, and it sets no blade length anywhere in Title 18. The open carry and concealed carry rules in Chapter 61 are written for firearms. A fixed blade on the belt in plain view, a folder in a pocket and an OTF in a jacket are the same thing in the eyes of the statute: lawful, unless you intend to use it against someone. The only place concealment matters is § 907(b), where it is one of the two elements of the intent offense, and the only place length matters is a school district's own discipline code.

Vehicles follow the same rule. A knife in the console, the glove box or a sheath on the seat is lawful transport anywhere in the state. Nothing in Pennsylvania law asks you to case it, separate it or declare it.

Philadelphia

Pennsylvania's preemption statute covers firearms, not knives, so a city may write its own knife rule, and Philadelphia did. Philadelphia Code § 10-820 says: "No person shall use or possess any cutting weapon upon the public streets or upon any public property at any time," defines a cutting weapon as "any knife or other cutting instrument which can be used as a weapon that has a cutting edge similar to that of a knife," and sets a fine of at least $300 and at least 90 days in jail. Read literally, it banned carrying a pocketknife on the sidewalk, and for years it was the strictest knife ordinance in the country.

In May 2023 Knife Rights sued the city in federal court under the Second Amendment. Rather than defend the ordinance, the city stipulated that § 10-820(2) is unenforceable, and the court endorsed the agreement on July 31, 2023 and closed the case. The ordinance has not been repealed, so you will still find it in the code, but the city has agreed it cannot charge anyone under it. The agreement does not stop a Philadelphia officer from stopping you or from charging a state offense, and § 907 and § 912 apply in the city as everywhere else. Carry in Philadelphia the way you would carry anywhere in Pennsylvania: as a tool, with nothing to hide.

No other Pennsylvania city has an ordinance that changes the picture for ordinary carry that we could find, but there is no central register, so if you carry in a city you do not know, read its code first.

Where You Cannot Carry

• K-12 schools and school transportAny knife, cutting instrument or cutting tool "in the buildings of, on the grounds of, or in any conveyance providing transportation to or from" a public, private or parochial elementary or secondary school is a first-degree misdemeanor. The statute offers a defense if the knife "is possessed and used in conjunction with a lawful supervised school activity or course or is possessed for other lawful purpose," and the defense is narrower than it sounds: it protects the shop class and the supervised activity, not the pocketknife forgotten in a bag. Colleges are not covered by § 912, but every campus has its own policy.
  § 912
• Court facilitiesCourtrooms, judges' chambers, jury rooms, the offices of the clerk, district attorney, sheriff and probation, and the corridors between them. The "dangerous weapon" definition here still names a dagger and a "knife (the blade of which is exposed in an automatic way by switch, push-button, spring mechanism or otherwise)," so an OTF or a double-edged blade in a courthouse is a third-degree misdemeanor even though it is legal on the street outside. Every county must provide a locker at the entrance where you can check it, and the ban has to be posted at the door.
  § 913
• Commonwealth propertyState buildings and grounds may post their own rules under § 7506. A knife where a posted rule forbids it is a summary offense.
  § 7506
• AirportsNo knives past the checkpoint under federal rules.
  TSA
• Private propertyEmployers, venues and property owners set their own policy. Breaking it gets you removed, and refusing to leave becomes defiant trespass.
  Posted rules

Minors

Pennsylvania sets no minimum age for owning or carrying a knife. The rule falls on the seller: § 6302 makes it a first-degree misdemeanor to sell or lease "any deadly weapon" to a person under 18, with an exception for lawful hunting. Whether a given knife is a deadly weapon is a question of fact. A hunting knife sold to a 16-year-old with a license for the season is the exception the statute wrote. For a minor who carries, § 912 is the statute that matters, because school is where a teenager's knife gets found.

Penalties

What the Internet Gets Wrong

Four things, most of them on page one of Google, and one of them on the previous version of this page. First, that the 2022 law was "Act 158": it was Act 119 of 2022, House Bill 1929, signed November 3, 2022 and effective 60 days later. Second, that automatics are legal to own but not to carry: the amendment removed the words from a statute that covered possession and carry alike. There is no separate carry rule for automatics in Pennsylvania. Third, that daggers, double-edged blades and butterfly knives are still banned: the words dagger, knife, razor and cutting instrument were all struck, not only the automatic clause. Fourth, that Philadelphia bans all knives on the street: the ordinance says so, and the city agreed in 2023 that it cannot enforce it. The one thing the older posts get right is the court facility rule, where the old automatic language still lives.

TEKTO Knives for Pennsylvania

Every TEKTO knife is legal to own and carry in Pennsylvania, so the choice is about the knife, not the law. The OTFs, the A5 Spry, A5 Spry Mini, A2 Badger, A7 Zastava and A4, are legal in Double Edge as well as Drop Point and Tanto, since the state draws no line between single and double edges. The A3 Delta side-opener, the F1 Alpha, F2 Bravo, F3 Charlie and F4 Echo manual flippers and the X1 Atlas fixed blade are legal everywhere the automatics are. Two habits are worth keeping: leave the automatic and the double edge in the car on a courthouse day, since § 913 still names them, and keep every knife out of a school bag.