Banning fireworks

Great Debates
81

Billy Rubin, I managed to keep myself equipped with a car too. But would most college students give up their car to pay a judgment debt if they didn’t have to? Of course not. And since they don’t have to (the law almost never forces people to pay judgment debts that would require liquidating their primary vehicle), I would not get the restitution in question, or if I ever did it would be paid out $25 a month over the next 2 years – and that doesn’t get me a new car when I need it to keep my job.

Are you proposing reforming the tort system?

82

There’s no question whatsoever that there’s need for tort reform, but that is not the issue at hand. Anyone with their eyes open knows that the illegality of something does nothing to prevent it’s common use. My point is this: Banned fireworks are just that, banned. It doesn’t change people from getting their hands on them, it creates a black market industry and a counterculture.it creates an additional law enforcement pain in the asses of our already overworked police and court systems. It wastes everyone’s time. It does not keep them out of the hands of dipsticks, it makes sure only dipsticks want to put their hands on them.

I’m not saying that you weren’t in a situation that was bad for you- on the contrary; I’m asking you how you can honestly think that banned fireworks would have stopped that or changed it one iota? I’m gonna guess that a kid who has the scratch to spend disposable income on fireworks could buy you a car- if you had bothered to go to the trouble of calling the cops and doing something about the issue.

And smile, dammit. I agree in principle with you- keep the stuff out of the hands of idiots. Trouble is, what you suggest is the wrong way to go about that.

b.

83

By the way, Kelly, I just looked at your location, which reminded me of something. In the peaceful burg of Niles(well, near it, the outskirts of skokie actually), years ago, I was hit at an intersection by a woman turning at a red light. She wrecked my car- which burst into flame totally without the benefit of bottle rockets!!! My passenger sustained injuries and I had to fix the car myself, out of pocket. I had to drive this beat up, multicolored wreck smelling of burnt upholstery and looking like it had been painted with a brush (because it had) for three years because the woman who hit me had no insurance, even though, at the time, insurance was required. She was breaking the law just driving. She then broke the law and hit me. When she came to court (I had to have my mom drive me) she was driving a new car. I’d love to trade you and merely have a bottle rocket shot at my car. if the cops don’t have time to track down and stop these idiots, how in hell do you expect they’ll be able to prevent fireworks smuggling?

b.

84

Billy Rubin, if I had called the cops at 4 a.m. on July 5th to tell them that someone in one of the dumpiest student apartment complexes in town had fired a bottle rocket in my general direction and that it narrowly missed my car, they would have asked if anyone was hurt and if not they would have said “that’s nice” and done nothing. At best. They might have laughed at me.

For someone who claims to know a lot about human nature, you seem rather ignorant about the typical behavior of police officers in small college towns.

The best way to keep fireworks out of the hands of idiots is to not make the fireworks in the first place. We made the anonymous sale of toluene illegal several years ago because it can be used to make trinitrotoluene. Toluene has many useful purposes, but it’s a dangerous chemical and today can only be purchased through chemical supply firms. Fireworks have far fewer useful purposes; we could easily ban or restrict their sale the same way we do for more powerful explosives (try buying a pound of C4 at your local grocery store). The reason we don’t isn’t because such a ban could not be effective, but because there are too many people with a vested (read: financial) interest in there not being a ban.

85

Billy Rubin, cars require permits, mandatory insurance, and (in some states) periodic inspection to use. Do you support permits, mandatory insurance, and training of firework users too? Should people who fire fireworks without a valid permit and fully paid up insurance face the same sort of serious criminal sanction that those who use cars without a valid permit and adequate insurance?

Keep in mind that it’s a lot harder (although not impossible) to anonymously cause an accident in a car than it is to do so with fireworks.

86

First: it is conjecture to say how the cops would act because you didn’t call and don’t know. I’m fully aware of the issues small town cops deal with, having cohabited with one for over a year.

Second: I stated, very clearly, “I know a thing or two about human nature” In what dictionary does “a thing or two” mean “a lot”?

Third. I have a can of toluene on my workbench at work. Along with lots of other chemicals. Of course, people have been making explosives etc. out of the damnedest things for years. It need not be Composition 3 or Composition 4 to be dangerous. Read Murra federal building. Wanna ban diesel and fertilizer?

I’m extremely sorry for you if you believe that you can stop the manufacture of anything, that is remarkably naive. I dont think you’re naive enough to believe it, but I’m often wrong.

let’s take a look at this scenario, shall we? Somehow we figure a way to ban fireworks. We have to destroy the lives of every man woman and child manufactring fireworks in China and several other countries to do so, and the jobs of thousands of people in the US are lost, but that’s OK.

One nimrod finds a bottle rocket in a drawer of an old dresser in a dump. He takes it apart. He figures out how it’s made. (that takes even the most seasoned idiot minutes, seconds with a fully functional brain) He digs around for information on makeing propellant and gunpowder. he finds that it’s incredibly easy to make and he does so. Soon he’s selling bottle rockets and firecrackers (and/or the instructions for making them) on the internet, at school, around the neighborhood. And some dumbass decides that shooting them at cars would be fun. He gets away with it, because the drivers of the cars do nothing. Are you really naive enough to thing this won’t happen? doesn’t happen in similar situations every single day? isn’t how the Speedball was invented? Crank? Designer drugs of all kinds? Zip guns? Please tell me you’re not. I have little enough respect for the legal system as is, without thinking it’s full of people who don’t realise these simple things.

b.

87

Sure, Like the woman who hit me. She had a serious criminal sanction. She took driving school and didn’t even get points off her license, and I was out a car. How about holding the person who does the damage responsible? Pay the bill or do time. No, this doesn’t fix anything, often enough, but it makes the action have a consequence, which it now does not. Cannot, if you never call the cops.

Licensing for professional pyrotechnicians already exists. As well as insurance and training. Amateur pyrotechnicians, like amateur _____ (fill in the blank with whatever you like) are amateur by the mere virtue of not having had the professional training. As a lot of amateur pyrotechnicians work in their backyards, there is no jurisdiction. No more than there is for you to drive a vehicle on private property.

There is no way to remove the fireworks. The best thing to do is deal with the situation as best as possible, and the first thing that comes to my mind is the idea that accountability is required.

Still, it’s simpler to say “ban them” than to address the problem itself, which is obviously not the fireworks but their misuse. No! Johnny didn’t do anything wrong! It was those nasty fireworks!

In 1996, october 31, I’m driving to Des Moines to set up a machine. Two kids throw a coke can full of pea gravel off the overpass, breaks the front window of my car. I call the cops on my cellphone. It’s 2:30 AM or thereabouts. The cops come, the cop is a small town guy, says yeah, he knows, that sort of thing happens, I have a pretty good idea who it is, I’ll do what I can.
I never hear anything but I get a police report, a feeling that at least my incident made the blotter. maybe something came of it, maybe not. I was tired, it had been a long day and a log drive, but someone did something illegal to me and I did the right thing, I called the cop and he did the best he could.

b.

88

JThunder

You changed the context of my post by omitting the rest of my post. Allow me.

The uniformed deputy stationed in the fireworks store that checked my driver’s license to confirm my address before I could buy anything didn’t seem to be too worried about my intentions. But you’re right JThunder, I’m guilty of fraud. If you’d like, I’ll email you my name and address so you can report me (and about half of metro Orlando) to the proper authorities.:wally

89

Dang you! Dang you to heck, ** E72521.** Even using small fireworks supports terrorisim! And makes the baby jesus cry. Law abiding people should stop wanting to use fireworks so nobody will make them, and they’ll all go away.

hehe!!!

b.

90

Fireworks are presumably restricted to “safe and sane” items here (aka snakes and sparklers), but that sure didn’t stop the stands on the Indian reservation from selling the good stuff.

91

I pointed out that the college student would be able to get fireworks even if they were illegal. The only proof I can offer up is that they have no trouble getting their hands on drugs which are also illegal, yet in demand.

Heck, when I was in college, people made bombs out of 2 liter soda bottles and alka-seltzer. People played “ghetto golf” in the school parking lot. College students are going to do dumb and dangerous things whether fireworks are illegal or not.

If making fireworks illegal somohow did make them all vanish from society, all you may have a golf ball going through your windsheild instead of a bottle rocket.

The better solution to the problem is holding people accountable for thier actions rather than trying to “child-proof” the entire planet.

92

That should read:

If making fireworks illegal did somehow them all vanish from society, you might have a golf ball going through your windsheild instead of a bottle rocket.

93

Hello,

That sounds extremely logical. And somewhat familiar. As you are probably aware, accountability is not something our current society is real strong on.

Btw, would you happen to be the same Debaser I knew from years ago on another board? I’m a little hazy on the details right now. :wink:

If so, great to see ya!

:slight_smile:

the allegedly Grumpy Old Man

94

P.S. Pleae pardon a five second hijack. If you have an interest in Mars: http://www.marsnews.com/phpBB/phpBB2/index.php

95

Billy:

You’re going to have to do a better job explaining where fireworks are going to come from if they were banned throughout the US, rather than just saying kids would get ahold of them “somehow”. There’s no comparison to drugs. Drugs are serious business and every step in the process is clandestine. The fact that tens of millions of adults are willing to spend lots of money provides a powerful incentive for secret manufacturers and smugglers to risk prosecution. Fireworks are kid stuff. The value-to-bulk is small. Especally given post 9/11 security and the fact that we’re dealing with a type of explosinves, who’s going to bother trying to smuggle them in? Or who’s going to bother trying to get ahold of the materials to make them secretly?

Debaser:

Come now. If fireworks became unavailable, kids would celebrate the 4th of July by throwing golf balls and rocks through the widshields of cars? For kids, fireworks have a certain allure that hurling blunt objects lacks. You’re pretending you’re firing a bazooka at a German tank. Hitting a moving car with a bottle rocket is 10 points, but getting one through the open window of a moving car is 100 points. Since these things are flimsy paper with a tiny little bang, the potential for real damage is minimal.

Am I the only one who’s skeptical that the bottle rocket fired at KellyM’s car would have ignited her newspaper bundles had it gone in? I’ve still got some bottle rockets left over from last year, so I think I’ll experiment this weekend with trying to get newspapers to ignite. I’ll even fluff them up into loose wads to make it easier. I’ll let y’all know.

96

Just whatever you do, don’t burn down San Fran or we will loose this debate. :slight_smile:

97

GOM

The only other boards I have probably used this username on was for the Ultima Online video game.

It’s a song by the Pixies and is often taken on boards so I am sure I am not the only Debaser out there.

98

Thanks for the response Debaser,

I was hoping I had found an old friend. Sorry to hear it’s not you.

99

Sqweels, here’s a little geography lesson for you.

The southern part of the United States abuts this country called Mexico.

In Mexico, there are a large number of people who just love their fireworks.

Like the indiana/illinois thing, if you don’t have ready availability of fireworks in one place, people will get them where they’re readily available. Like Mexico. Then they’ll return to the US where they’ll continue to engage in fireworks usage, much, perhaps, to your surprise but not anyone elses.

Let me further clear something up for you, something I posted much earlier in this thread.

If something people want (and it is obvious that people want fireworks, else why do they enjoy such enormous sales volume) becomes illegal, there will be people who still want them, and there will be people willing to take the risk to obtain them illegally and make a profit therefrom.

One can even reasonably draw the logical conclusion that the people who are most likely to be willing to break the law to lay their hands on an illegal substance are the people you least wanted to have them anyway. Hence, banning the substance has only had the effect of taking it out of the hands of people unwilling to perform an illegal act, and does nothing to stop the people who are willing to do so.

Your argument seems to be “fireworks are not like drugs” Yippie kiy yay, you have just passed the sesame street level. One of these things is indeed NOT like then others. Given the present level of consumption of fireworks across the US, tell me that there aren’t people as addicted to the resounding “boom” as they are to a joint after lunch, a martini after dinner, or a handjob in an alley while waiting for the bus. Can you? no.

Name an illegal substance which has not found its way back into the US. You can’t. You never will be able to. The closest thing in existance? R12. R12 was banned. You can still get it if you’re determined, but the fact is, many if not most cars AC units will now run if retrofitted to R134. Readily and easily available R134. The only way to effectively remove a substance from common use is to replace it with a substance just as satisfactory.

As for throwing rocks at the windshields of cars- Do you actually read the threads before you post to them? or just hunt out things you think you can focus your high powered (drop to zero indeed!) logic on and ignore the rest of the post?

b.

100

According to your logic, the public is hopelessly addicted to tiny rubber bouncy balls- which sell out of gum machines by the million. Just because people buy something does not mean that the majority of those people would go to great lengths to obtain that product if it was more tightly regulated. I know you like fireworks, but to most of us, they just arn’t that cool.

I use fireworks when I am in a city where they are legal. I don’t bother when I am cities where they are illegal. I can take them or leave them. They are neat. But not worth any trouble. The fact that we live most of the year fireworks-free is a pretty good sign that they arn’t quite as entertaining and desireable as, say, some good drugs.

Let’s look at the effects banning would have. Nobody claims that making fireworks illegal will mean that there will never ever be another on on US soil. But there are desireable outcomes other than making them go away completly.

  1. It’d be harder for people to get them- Many people (think about high school students, for example) don’t just have the time, money, and transportation to illegally obtain illegal fireworks. Walking down the block to the fireworks stand to buy an M80 is a very different story than buying something off of a smuggling run from Mexico. Sure, your dumb college student might still get some, but the high schooler thats ten times dumber will not.

  2. Law-abiding citizens won’t use them- Plenty of people follow the law just because it is the law. My mom would never dream of doing something illegal for mere amusment. And she consistantly does make sure that there are not bottle rockets (which are illegal around here) at family gatherings even when the younger adults want them.

  3. It will be easier to trace and procecute damage caused by fireworks- If your the only one on your block with fireworks, it’s easy to trace Mr. X’s burned down garage to you. And a general ban adds another layer of illegality to your act, meaning that the charges are easier to prosecute since what your were doing was patantly illegal from the beginning. This also gives police a chance to crack down on people who are being reckless but that have not (yet) caused any actual damage.

  4. People who do use illegal fireworks will use them in less populated areas to avoid detection- which lessens the public safety hazard.