Bowie Knife - Legal Status

Legal Status

Although many jurisdictions worldwide have knife legislation regulating the length of a blade one may own or carry, certain locales in the United States have legislation restricting or prohibiting the carrying of a "Bowie knife". Most of these laws were passed decades earlier, originally in the interest of controlling or eliminating the then-common practice of "dueling", a term which had degenerated from a rarely-used social custom into a generalized description for any knife or gun fight between two contestants. Many of these laws are still in force today.

In 1837, the year after Bowie’s death at the Alamo, the Alabama legislature passed laws imposing a $100 transfer tax on 'Bowie' knives and decreeing that anyone carrying a Bowie knife who subsequently killed a person in a fight would be charged with premeditated murder. Louisiana and Virginia prohibited the concealed carrying of any Bowie knife, while Mississippi made such knives illegal when carried concealed or when used as a dueling weapon. In Tennessee, the use of Bowie knives to settle disputes on the spot so alarmed state legislators that in 1838 they not only made the concealed carrying of a Bowie knife a criminal felony, but also prohibited the use of a Bowie knife in any altercation, regardless of self-defense or other mitigating excuse:

"That if any person carrying any knife or weapon known as a Bowie knife...or any knife or weapon that shall in form, shape, or size resemble a Bowie knife, on a sudden encounter, shall cut or stab another person with such knife or weapon, whether death ensues or not, such person so stabbing or cutting shall be guilty of a felony, and upon conviction thereof shall be confined in the jail and penitentiary house of this State, for a period of time not less than three years, nor more than fifteen years."

Ironically, in modern-day Texas, the state Jim Bowie died defending, the carrying of a Bowie knife "on or about one's person" is specifically prohibited under state law. This prohibition does not apply to a person carrying the Bowie knife on one's own property, nor to any person carrying a Bowie knife inside of or directly en route to a motor vehicle or watercraft owned by that person or under that person's control.