There is something profoundly wrong when a law designed to make cities safer risks turning into potential criminals those who climb high altitude with a backpack on their shoulders, or take their flock to graze in a mountain hut, and a field knife on their belt. Yet this is what could happen with Legislative Decree no. 23/2026, now undergoing parliamentary conversion, which introduces severe sanctions for anyone found outside their home in possession of sharp or pointed bladed instruments exceeding certain measurements.
The problem is not the decree itself, which responds to a need for urban safety. The problem is that the text, in its current formulation, does not distinguish between someone who brings a knife into a fight and someone who takes it on a path in the Dolomites, a cliff to climb or along the crossing of the Apennines. And that distinction, for those who live in the mountains, is not a detail: it is everything.
Tool, not symbol
To understand why the issue touches raw nerves, we need to move away from the cinematic imagery of the knife as an object of threat and approach the reality of those who frequent high altitudes with seriousness and competence. In the Alpine and Apennine environments, the knife, from the multipurpose one (the most famous is the Swiss one) to the actual mountain knife, performs functions that have no equally effective practical equivalents.
Let’s take a concrete case: a hiker becomes entangled in the rope while climbing a rockand a rope becomes tangled around a limb under tension. Every second counts, and climbing gloves make it impossible to untie the knot by hand. Anyone who doesn’t have a knife at hand finds themselves in a situation that can quickly escalate. Whoever has it cuts it, and solves it.
Or again: a mountain biker falls on an isolated path in Val di Fassa, in October, with temperatures dropping quickly at dusk. He needs to improvise a splint to immobilize a limb, or gather some dry material to start an emergency fire before dark. Without a knife, the branches are not prepared, the bark is not smoothed, the emergency becomes more complicated.
These are not extreme or survival manual scenarios. These are situations that the National Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps and the CAI, the Italian Alpine club, know well, because they manage them every season. And in each of these situations, the knife is part of the standard equipment, not an accessory for adventurers.
A one hundred and sixty-two year long culture
The The Italian Alpine Club has written to the group leaders of the Chamber and Senate and to the Ministry vigilant to ask that an explicit exemption be introduced for hiking, mountaineering and rescue activities in the natural environment. It is a request that has the measure of common sense: recognizing that the context changes the nature of objects.
A knife in a neighborhood of a big city at three in the morning has a meaning. The same knife on the CAI path number 23 that leads to the Gnifetti Refuge, at two thousand nine hundred meters, has another. Treating them the same way is not justice, it is legislative approximation. The general president of the CAI Antonio Montani said it with institutional balance, choosing not to raise his voice but to let history weigh: for over one hundred and sixty years the association promotes a responsible and aware mountain culture. That culture includes knowing what you carry with you, why you carry it, and how you use it. It includes respect for nature, for others and for oneself. It does not include carrying a knife as an act of bullying or intimidation.
The void that the law does not see
According to data from the Interior Ministry, in 2024 malicious injuries, which also include stabbings, have increased by 5.8%, a significant figure but certainly not an epidemic. And the blind spot of the decree is geographical even before cultural. The rules regulating public safety are written with urban spaces in mind: streets, squares, public transport, clubs. MItaly has forty thousand kilometers of marked pathsit has the Alps and the Apennines, it has refuges and bivouacs, it has one of the most advanced mountain rescue systems in the world. Above all, it has millions of people, families, children, elderly people, professional mountaineers and weekend walkers, who frequent the mountains with passion and competence. Added to which are the tens of thousands of people who live in the mountains every day for work. None of them carry a knife because they feel in danger. They bring it because the mountains require autonomy, and autonomy requires the right tools. A field knife is not a sign of aggression: it is a sign of preparation.
If the decree were to remain in its current form, without exceptions, each of these citizens would risk sanctions every time they descend into the valley after an excursion and pass through a municipality before returning home. It is a paradox that no legislator probably intended to create.
What you ask
The CAI’s request is surgical and not ideological: an explicit exemption, clearly formulated, which protects those who practice activities in a natural environment. Not a general exemption, not a safe conduct. A rule that recognizes the specificity of the mountain context and distinguishes it from the urban oneas already happens in many European legislations that regulate the carrying of work and specific use tools.
It is a battle that is worth doing, and that is worth following in the coming months, while the decree reaches the Chambers for conversion. Because there isn’t just one object at play. There is recognition that the mountain has its rules, its logic, its cultureand that those who frequent it deserve to be understood, not just tolerated.
