By fireworks I mean the good stuff like fire crackers, bottle rockets, etc. I have been to 34 states, and noticed that there were stores selling these devices, yet, when I checked with the local law I was told in was illegal to set them off…even in the rural areas. Here in Milwaukee ALL fireworks are illegal, even lame devices like smoke bombs, sparklers, and snakes.
My first question is, do any of you live someplace where there is no legal prohibition against shooting off common fireworks? (at least during the 4th of July)
My second question is, seeing that so many places ban John Q. Public
from lighting off fireworks, who are those stores supposed to be selling to?
Where I lived in Manchaca, Texas (a suburb of Austin), we could fire off anything. But Austinites couldn’t. The cops used to sit at the city line and anyone who bought fireworks in Manchaca and headed back into Austin was stopped and ticketed. Where I am moving next week to Sunrise, Florida (a Fort Lauderdale suburb) also allows fireworks to be set off in the city.
Speaking from Illinois here: If it IS illegal to set off fireworks in your backyard, you sure couldn’t tell by what goes on in our neighborhood every 4th of July. People drive to Indiana to buy them, the big stuff like M-80s and bottle rockets. All the really big Indiana fireworks dealers take out huge newspaper ads in the local papers, starting (actually) about now, come to think of it.
I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to have a permit to set these things off, but I don’t think anybody ever bothers.
It’s legal to have them, but not to buy or sell them. Go figure.
Also, there may be local laws and ordinances, I dunno. This medium-sized blue-collar working-class town is pretty loose when it comes to fireworks. The only time I’ve ever heard of anybody attracting official attention is when a bottle rocket blows a kid’s hand off or something.
Same deal here in Houston that Wanderer mentioned for the Austin area. As soon as you get outside of the city limits, you start seeing the roadside fireworks vendors.
You can set’em off in a lot of the surrounding communities, and my family does on the 4th on a dock about 250’ out in Trinity Bay.
But the cops do monitor the city-line vendors and will nab you if you go buy some and head back into town. It’s illegal to possess them within the city limits. I usually hear a few in town on New year’s, but they are definitely subordinate to the gunfire (stay inside at midnight around here).
[QUOTE]
** pkbites,
[This has nothing to do with yer post, but due to yer name and location, are you connected at all w/pkware? Just curious…]
You mean the Data compression experts from Brown Deer, Wisconsin (a suburb of Milwaukee)? Nope. I’m senior staff at a large consulting firm, and I own a small sporting goods store in West Bend. My screen name is a private joke between my wife & myself.
Speaking from a Canadian point of view, I don’t believe that you are allowed to set off fireworks ANYWHERE here. They aren’t even available for public purchase. The only ones I’ve ever seen have been ones used by professionals, or smuggled in from the US, and set off WAY out in the country.
Explosive fireworks are also illegal in California, becuase they are considered too dangerous, and also bottle rockets and sky rockets are seen as potential sources for wild fires. But people set them off every fourth of July anyway. If you go up into the hills around Monterey to watch the city do fireworks, you can often see sky rockets in the towns around the bay (i counted at least 20 sky rockets go off in the town of Seaside alone). I also hear and see bottle rockets and the occasional sky rocket go off in my town.
Something interesting but probably a bit dangerous is, kids here have learned how to make a common whistling firework explode with a loud bang.If done right, they can explode quite loudly, and i remember one set off a car alarm last 4th of july.
Sometimes. It depends upon how crabby the neighbors are. Sparklers and small ‘pops’, like those little colored balls you throw down to explode, or those wine bottle shaped things with strings that you pull and a tiny firecracker goes off and blows out colored streamers are pretty well OK.
Soon, with the 4th coming, all sorts of places will spring up selling fireworks under the name of ‘noise makers’, and as people start buying tons of them, the cops will start shutting down some of the places who sell the high powered stuff like mortar shells, M-80s and things they keep ‘hidden.’
I used to be able to take my .22 and go plinking in the local, main drainage ditches without anyone giving a hoot, but now hey call the cops, who will ticket you for discharging a firearm in a residential community. Now, I have to drive for miles to the woods, find a spot, shoot some and hope no one complains.
In NC…only rockets are illegal…well…firecrackers and the like too. But anything that shoots sparks is allowed. Just walk in a Food Lion. They even sell them there.
Illegal in Iowa but not in Missouri.It is only 60+miles to the border where they set up stands for us to smuggle them back.Kind of stupid if you ask me.
You need a permit to use fireworks in South Australia. Funnily enough, the application form is available at he very place you lodge it for approval - the store that wants to sell you the fireworks!!!
When I was a kid, fireworks were not regulated at all. Every year, we would celebrate Guy Fawkes Night with all the wondeful items mentioned above. For a kid aged between 5 and ten, it was great fun.
Unfortunately, the fireworks were available in almost every convenience store for several weeks before hand, which meant a constant barrage of minor explosions and pyromaniacs during this time. Everything and anything was considered fair game for a cracker or a penny banger. Blowing up letter boxes was a favourite.
The government stepped in after a particularly bad year where a few kids did serious damage to themselves and other people, like losing fingers, toes, eyes etc. Thanks to these idiots, “Cracker Night” is now a fond but distant memory.
Doobieous is near me, so the laws are the same. Search the net you CAN buy any type of pyrotechnics [fireworks] on the net. Just DON"T do it now because the UPS people have the cops there looking for those nice labels they put on the packages ‘EXPLOSIVES’ you know?
Also Doobieous, Chinatown in SF is full of them but they usually won’t have anything to do with anyone not chinese when you want to buy them.
One time the sheriff came & left a note for me saying if I wanted my rockets, etc, to come to the sheriff station to get them. That was because I ordered during the busy season. But ordering on the offseason is safe.
Basically, you can set them off anywhere but dont get caught. I made any type of them at home in SD, Calif, getting chemicals mailorder. Huge M80’s they were fun.
They’re illegal here in Georgia, but right across the Savannah River in South Carolina, you can get them easily. In fact, as soon as you cross the bridge, the first thing you see is a fireworks dealer!
Fireworks of any kind, from sparklers to look-out-its-going-to-kill-us bombs, are illegal in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Unless you are licensed by that respective state to launch fireworks, of course.
I’ve seen signs for fireworks for sale in rural areas of Alberta (so at least SOME places in Canada). But I think it might be only on Indian Reserve land.
Well, I can speak for Ohio. You can legally buy, sell, or posess anything up to a half-stick (of dynamite) without any sort of permit, but you theoretically need a rather strict permit to legally set off most things-- Sparklers, poppers, and the like are OK. Note that this does not stop anyone on Independence Day. The cops say thay they can’t enforce it because there’s too many people doing it, but I’ll bet that if they did start arresting, a lot fewer folks would. It’s a wonder that so few folks do die from it… There’ve been cases on my street of an adult lighting one of the aforementioened half-sticks and giving it to a four year old and telling him to throw it.
Once, my Scout troop was on a trip up to Canada, and would be gone over the Fourth, and we were very disappointed that we wouldn’t be able to bring sparklers, etc. It occured to us too late that we probably could have gotten away with flares.
In Montana, where I am now, I get the impression that they’re legal, with either no permits or very easy ones. I’ll have to check up on that.