In the Official Journal of July 6, 2025, butterfly knives, automatic knives, and knives with brass knuckles are specifically classified as Category D weapons.
As if to find some semblance of a response to the media coverage of the horrible knife murders committed this year, our political leaders are taking it upon themselves to harm the knife industry, which is so important in our country, even though everyone knows that it’s not the tool that’s the problem.
Here is an initial overview of the legal changes. We will come back to it.
a Very Strong Pressure on Certain Types of Knives
Butterfly knives, automatic knives, and knives with brass knuckles are now specifically classified as Category D. Japanese throwing stars are also affected.
Thus, only merchants (and therefore also manufacturers who sell their products) with a prefectural authorization will be able to sell them.
The purchase and possession of these knives remain unrestricted. Carrying and transporting remain subject to legitimate reason, but it will be more difficult to justify, even if these knives were already very poorly perceived in practice.
Recall of the Law that Came into Effect on September 6, 2013
In 2012 and then in 2023, the classification and legal framework for weapons, governing their carrying and transport, were revised. Article R. 311-2 of the Public Security Code classifies as a Category D weapon “all objects likely to constitute a dangerous weapon for public safety, including: concealed non-firearms and daggers, knife-daggers, batons, hypodermic projectors, and other weapons listed in an order from the Ministry of Interior.”
Article R311-1 of the Internal Security Code more broadly defines a weapon as “any object or device designed or intended by nature to kill, injure, strike, neutralize, or cause incapacitation,” and a bladed weapon as: “any weapon whose piercing, cutting, or shattering action is due only to human force or to a mechanism to which it has been transmitted, excluding an explosion.” Our pocket knife can therefore be included.
The carrying and transport of these “weapons” are prohibited except for legitimate reason.
No clear definition of a knife had been proposed until then. No dimension, no locking system, no precise shape. What mattered, and this is still the case today because any knife can be considered a weapon depending on the context, is the effect the object can have if it is used with bad intentions.
Context is of primary importance: the use by the carrier, proof of intent by the carrier, and the carrying of the object in a demonstration, a gathering, or an assembly.
Since April 2024, towards a New Procedure: Fixed Penalty Fine for Misdemeanors (a.F.D.)
An individual arrested for carrying or transporting a knife without legitimate reason can be taken into police custody. He must then justify his reason. If the legitimate reason is recognized by the judge, the carrier is acquitted. From April 2024 until 2026, a new procedure is being tested, the fixed penalty fine for misdemeanors or A.F.D., in 13 cities (Bobigny, Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier, Nantes, Nice, Paris, Pontoise, Rennes, Saint-Étienne, and Toulouse) in order to streamline the procedure and relieve congestion in the courts. It is highly probable that it will then be generalized to the entire territory.
If you wish to know more about the A.F.D., a full article has been dedicated to this new procedure, which is being tested until 2026, in La Passion des Couteaux magazine No. 162.
