Knife Laws in Argentina

Anonymous said...

Just to clarify, it is legal to own a bowie-scale knife in Argentina?

I might just pick one up. Seems like a good stepping stone psychologically to the responsibility of owning a gun.

April 26, 2010 9:09 AM

This may be useful for those of you living here in Argentina, thanks for asking.

In the city of Buenos Aires, you are fined between 1000 and 3000 pesos or 5 to 15 days of arrest, those that carry blades and other unconventional weapons "inequívocamente destinados a ejercer violencia o agredir", that's Spanish for "With the undoubtful purpose of doing violence and attack others." So if you have a legitimate purpose for carrying it, one that isn't illegal, you're good to go. Even for criminal use, the penalty is luaghable, something that sure could use a modification.

In the province of Buenos Aires, there's a somewhat similar penalty for carrying a knife alone, but you have a broad spectrum of legitimate reasons for carrying it, like using it por for your profession, hobby or other legitimate activity.
In a nutshell, there's really no clear law in Buenos Aires and most provinces that I know of, and it basically allows you to carry anything you want unless you clearly do so with criminal intent.

So, feel free to carry anytihng you want. Its better to keep it ou of sight just in case. Most often cops dont know the law, even though most know they can't arrest you simply for carrying a knife, but they might try to take it away from you if its particularly big, looks menacing, or they just want it for themselves :-). In that case you're probably better of losing the knife that starting an arguement, but the truth is that the law is on your side, its just better to avoid the discussion.

FerFAL