Gilbert, Arizona – July 23, 2026: Twenty years ago a single newspaper article changed the course of knife owners’ civil rights in America.On July 25, 2006, Knife Rights Founder Doug Ritter opened The Wall Street Journal to read an outrageous and highly inflammatory headline article entitled “How New, Deadly Pocketknives Became a $1 Billion Business.” Filled with distortions, misrepresentations, innuendo, cherry-picked quotes, and outright falsehoods, it sought to demonize so-called “tactical knives,” any one-hand opening lock-blades, and lay the groundwork for the same sort of restrictions that had already taken hold in Europe.
Instead, it sparked something entirely different and unprecedented in our history.
Reading that article, Ritter realized there was no organization dedicated to protecting the rights of America’s knife owners, let alone advancing those rights. There was no aggressive, grassroots voice fighting to preserve our ability to own, carry and use one of mankind’s oldest and most essential tools.That realization led directly to founding Knife Rights later in 2006.
The author’s aim was to inflame things to further degrade our rights. It is hard to believe that he ever imagined his article would ignite a nationwide knife owners’ civil rights movement. Yet that’s exactly what happened.
Over the past two decades, Knife Rights has transformed what many told me was impossible into reality. Since beginning our legislative efforts in 2009, Knife Rights can count 58 bills and court victories repealing knife bans in 36 states and in Federal law, and in more than 200 cities and towns. We have defeated 13 anti-knife bills. Today Knife Rights is litigating federal Second Amendment challenges to knife bans that could permanently secure constitutional protections for knife owners nationwide and impact the wider Second Amendment fight.
When Rittert founded Knife Rights, he adopted the slogan A Sharper Future™ and built the organization on the principles that these were Essential Tools – Essential Rights™. Twenty years later, that vision is no longer just an aspiration. It is a reality that continues to grow with every legislative victory and every courtroom success.
Whether you’ve been with us since the beginning or joined the fight more recently, every membership, every donation, every email, every call to a legislator, and every word of encouragement has helped make Knife Rights The One Getting It Done™ for knife owners and the larger knife community in America.
Twenty years is a remarkable milestone, but our work is far from finished.
The fight to protect our freedoms never ends. Knife Rights will continue to rewrite knife law in America™, defend the Second Amendment rights of knife owners, and ensure that future generations inherit an even Sharper Future™ than the one we enjoy today.
Thank you for standing with us over these past twenty years. Together, we’ve reversed history, and together, we’ll continue making it.
If you haven’t yet done so, please consider donating, or donating again, in the Ultimate Steel Tail End Bonus Drawing to help us keep on creating history.
Knife Rights: Celebrating 20 Years of Rewriting Knife Law in America!
