The Wrist Flick Test
New York City's Administrative Code defined a gravity knife as any knife with a blade that could be opened by the force of gravity or centrifugal force. The law was written in 1954, aimed at the same type of folding gravity knives that paratroopers carried in World War II. But the definition contained a fatal ambiguity: it did not specify how much force.
NYPD developed what became known as the "wrist flick test." An officer would take a folding knife — any folding knife — hold it with the blade closed, and flick their wrist to see if the blade would swing open by centrifugal force. If it opened, the knife was classified as a gravity knife. The carrier was arrested.
The problem: almost any folding knife with a slightly loose pivot will open with a hard enough wrist flick. A knife that its owner opened with a thumb stud — the intended, manual method — could be reclassified as a gravity knife by a police officer who flicked it hard enough. The test did not measure how the owner used the knife. It measured how hard the officer could flick it.
The Scale
Between 2003 and 2018, over 200,000 people were arrested in New York City under the gravity knife law. Not warned. Not ticketed. Arrested. Handcuffed, booked, jailed, charged with criminal possession of a weapon.
The demographics were not random. Studies found that over 85% of those arrested were Black or Latino. The majority were working people — construction workers, electricians, bicycle messengers, restaurant workers — carrying common folding knives as daily tools. A delivery worker carrying a three-inch folder clipped to his pocket could be arrested, charged with a weapon crime, and face up to a year in jail.
The same knife was legal to buy at any hardware store in the city. It was sold openly, carried openly, and used openly by millions of New Yorkers. But if an officer decided to flick-test it, it became a weapon.
The Legal Challenges
Civil rights organizations, public defenders, and knife advocacy groups fought the law for years. The Legal Aid Society of New York documented case after case of working people — people with no criminal record, no intent to harm anyone — losing their jobs, their housing, and their freedom over a pocket knife that any hardware store sold for twelve dollars.
The New York legislature passed a bill to reform the gravity knife law in 2016. Governor Cuomo vetoed it. They passed it again in 2017. Cuomo vetoed it again. It was not until 2019 that the law was finally amended to require that a knife be designed to open by gravity — not just capable of opening under extreme wrist force.
What Texas Got Right
Texas never had a gravity knife problem because HB 1935 eliminated the concept entirely. There is no gravity knife classification in Texas. There is no wrist flick test. There is no mechanism-based restriction at all. A knife is a knife. What matters is the person carrying it, not the physics of how the blade opens.
The New York story is a cautionary tale about what happens when knife laws are written vaguely and enforced aggressively. Two hundred thousand arrests. Overwhelmingly targeting working people of color. Over a tool you can buy at Home Depot.
In Texas, every knife — OTF, switchblade, folder, gravity knife, fixed blade — is legal for adults 18 and over. No flick tests. No mechanism classifications. No two hundred thousand arrests for carrying a tool.