If you were planning on picking up a sturdy switchblade or gravity knife from one of the Home Depots in NYC for your next home improvement project, or because you wanted to stab someone, you should note that they’re no longer available. That’s because last week, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office persuaded that store and 13 other retailers to stop selling such knives. They’re generally illegal in New York, and the retailers have agreed to surrender their inventory and forfeit any profits they made from illegal knife sales over the past four years.

A Home Depot spokesman told the New York Times that the knives are sold for “various home-improvement projects.” But Manhattan’s District Attorney told the Associated Press that about a third of Manhattan’s 59 homicides in 2009 were committed with knives. He also released a hidden video recording that shows an employee for an unnamed store (not necessarily Home Depot) knew the knives being sold were illegal:

“If you carry it like this and the cops see it, you are either, A, going to get a ticket or, B, might get arrested,” an unidentified salesman tells an undercover officer in one video clip. “So if you can, just keep it in your pocket.”

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