I think you missed the part where I wrote about the severity of consequences (getting poked with a pen, from my earlier post). Sports like LAX, football, hockey, with the dangers of brain injuries, absolutely should be highly regulated because the consequence is so high. Playing catch can have injuries, but the risk of something severe is much lower, so the need to “regulate” is lower.
While more children probably do get hurt playing kickball, the risk of the type and severity of injuries associated with fireworks makes it worth regulating.
Do you believe that everything dangerous should be legal? Should anything be regulated, ever? Where would you draw the line? Obviously not at fireworks, but… where?
Spoken like someone who never got to play with fireworks as a kid.
There’s a difference between seeing a shiny in the sky and running around shooting roman candles at each other and scaring the shit out of the cows and having the most fun of your life until you eventually get laid a couple of years later.
I had same experience others of previous generations have mentioned. Everyone I knew fooled around with fireworks (and not necessarily just on 7/4), nobody I knew ever got hurt. But obviously some people got hurt. There’s no way it’s safe, compared to staying home and reading a book.
Unlike some other things though where parent/societal risk aversion on behalf of kids has escalated dramatically since I was a kid, we were always harangued not to play with fireworks, that isn’t new at least not in suburban/urban middle class northeast US. My parents would have ‘killed’ me if they knew. Our chapter book in 4th or 5th grade was about some kid blinded by fireworks. It was mainly a story of conquering adversity, but started with the object lesson don’t use fireworks!
I never let my kids (and ‘read a book’ is still a standing joke with them now that they’re grown), but I assume the most rambunctious of them did anyway.
Those really aren’t fireworks. Although I do know a few kids that got pretty bad burns with sparklers. Once they’re out kids forget they are still hot at the top or they want to run and hit someone with them.
Sure and I think they are dangerous, as I said. But generally the consequences are fairly low compared to the types of fireworks that are illegal. I can buy sparklers and similar types in my grocery store here, even though sale of fireworks is illegal in NY. Sparklers can burn and if an eye gets burnt it can be bad. But the big fireworks leave 3rd degree burns and maimed hands.
Well, I’m not advocating that 5 year olds be given mortar rounds or anything. But a 13 year old is more than capable of shooting off bottle rockets, or lighting a few firecrackers. It just seems strange to me to say “I would never let my kids play with fireworks! Except for the safe kind you can buy in grocery stores, which by the way, account for 25% of emergency room visits”
In a broad sense, I suppose I think that things that have a significant, foreseeable potential of doing harm to an unconnected third party should be regulated or possibly illegal, and that things that are most likely to only harm willing and voluntary participants should be left alone. People should in general have the right to do stupid, risky things to themselves if they want to do stupid, risky things to themselves. For instance, I believe in speed limits for vehicles because you can kill someone else if you speed. But if you drive a car without a seat-belt or ride a motorcycle without a helmet? (Shrug) It is your funeral–go for it.
In general, I think it is pretty easy to tell someone else that there needs to be a law stopping them from doing what they are doing if it is something that you aren’t doing. You are much less likely to be happy with it if somebody comes along and tries to outlaw or regulate something that has been a traditional practice of your own culture for generations. Outlawing fireworks on the 4th of July and New Years is (in my neck of the woods, at least) easily as big a deal as would be outlawing eggs on Easter (because every once in a while someone gets salmonella) or outlawing trees for Christmas (because every once in a while a dry tree catches on fire.) It would be a Very Big Deal with a lot of noise.
Did I say fireworks should be totally outlawed? No, I didn’t.
I did, however, on what people should take into account when making decisions about the safety and benefits of their activities. You are free to disagree, but as far as I’m concerned, I’d be far more likely to drive, and allow (even encourage!) my son to drive, than I would to encourage the private use of fireworks.
