Over the past 60 years, tens of thousands of black and Latino New Yorkers have been arrested for carrying so-called gravity knives — small, easy-to-access blades that are used by everyone from stagehands to steelworkers.

But on Thursday, in another demonstration of New York’s surging progressive wing’s influence, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ended that practice, signing a bill to remove such knives from the category of “deadly weapons,” a designation reserved for guns, daggers and switchblades, and allow their possession.

New York law defines a gravity knife as a knife with the blade in the handle that can be opened with a one‐handed flick of the wrist. They differ from switchblades, which use a spring to propel the blade into an open position automatically with the push of a button.

But critics of the old law said common folding knives and tradespeople’s knives could be deemed gravity knives if an officer was able to flick them open with centrifugal force, and some people had been arrested for possessing ordinary knives they needed for work.