Should Fireworks be Illegal (to Consumers)?

In My Humble Opinion
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[sub]NOTE TO MODS: I wasn’t sure if this topic was weighty enough to be a Great Debate. If you feel it is, please move it.[/sub]

I ran a search on threads with the word “Fireworks” in the title. I noticed that lots of people have opinions/questions about fireworks, and that the topic of whether or not they should be illegal to consumers is often briefly touched upon, but that there has not been a thread devoted to consumers’ legal access to fireworks.

So here we go.

Mrs. HeyHomie and I live here in Sangamon County, Illinois. 'Round here, fireworks are, for all intents and purposes, illegal. You can buy them at fireworks stands throughout the city, but you have to have a display permit (a lengthy and expensive process). Until recently, fireworks vendors have conveniently forgotten to check display permits, and local law enforcement has looked the other way. However, that all changed a couple of years ago. Lawsuits were filed. The words “police crackdown” were bandied about. Fines were levied. In at least one case, a prison sentence was issued :eek: .

Fortunately, we can stop by Fireworks World :cool: in Pacific, Missouri every time we go to visit Mrs. HeyHomie’s side of the family. I can walk in there with $100 and walk out with enough explosives to detonate a small home.

Obviously, I believe that fireworks should be legal to consumers, as I’m quite the consumer of them myself :smiley: . When this subject comes up, I’m often met with histrionic platitudes about leaving the fireworks to the professionals.

Trouble is, I’m a grown man. If I injure myself or damage my property by the mishandling of fireworks, I have no one to blame but myself. There are always lawmakers and do-gooders who are fanatically interested in protecting me from myself, and I find it rather tiresome.

Undoubtedly someone will always mention the children. “WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN???” And every year we read about dumbass kids who blow their hands off handling fireworks. I say, don’t blame the fireworks themselves. Blame the dumbass kids. Blame the fireworks vendor who sold fireworks to someone under 18. Or better yet, blame the parents who weren’t properly supervising the dumbass kids.

So, bottom line, IMHO is,
[ul]
[li]Fireworks are cool and should be legal for adults to buy.[/li][li]Buying fireworks contributes to the local economy of the locality where the fireworks store is.[/li][li]Adults should be held accountable for their own actions, and for the actions of their children.[/li][li]When someone misuses a product, don’t ban the product itself. Prosecute the misuse of the product.[/li][li]Fireworks are cool.[/li][/ul]

Discuss.

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Oh, and before anyone reads my post and assumes that I’m routinely committing the crime of buying fireworks in Missouri and importing them into Illinois (and thus advocating illegal actions and getting this thread closed) - I never EVER bring Missouri fireworks into Illinois. Detonate so much as a firecracker here and local law enforcement are on you like stink on sh*t. No, I buy them in Missouri and launch them in Missouri.

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They are illegal within Dallas County city limits in Texas. Main reason for this?

They are in fact a fire hazard. We go through some really bad droughts, year after year, fireworks set off by the unassuming public ended up burning down not only thier house but their neighbors. Sparks from the fireworks land on the roof tops and poof up goes the house.

I don’t mind firework displays, but not within a populated area by Joe Public.

So yes, I do believe they should continue to be illegal. :slight_smile:

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Fireworks are illegal in Georgia, but I can go across the bridge to South Carolina and buy all I want (although, I never have).

When people here get busted for fireworks possession, they bitch and moan about the how the police should be out busting “real” criminals and not hassling them for having a little fun.

You know, fun, like a kid who gets his finger blown off, or like when a bottle rocket goes astray and sets fire to something. Fun!!

Sorry, Jasper, you ARE a “real” criminal and you know it.

There’s usually one or to professionally sponsored fireworks display (either on River Street or Grayson Stadium) you could watch for free and it’ll look a helluva lot better that anything you could dream up.

Even though HeyHomie says he’ll take responsibility for his own injuries, there’s several thousand slack-jawed yokels (no offense, Cletus) who will want to sue. It’s one of those “good suffering with the bad” situations you just have to live with.

You can always petition your local or state officials to change the rules, but they’re likely to want to cover their own asses from lawsuits.

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Not only legalize them (where fire conditions permit) but bring back the good old fireworks: M-80s, cherry bombs, etc.

I usually spend the 4th up in rural Washington State, where everybody and his brother stages their own fireworks display. Little fire hazard because of the rain, and generally no serious injuries to report. But even if there were, so what? Think of it as evolution in action. :smiley:

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I note that no one has distinguished between various levels of fireworks.

In Oregon, when I was a kid, you could get low level fireworks (maybe you still can). Sparklers, caps, smoke bombs, snakes, etc. Good enough fun. I think these are called “Class C” fireworks. Across the river in Washington you could get slightly more interesting stuff.

Where I live now, you can’t even buy caps. So people drive far off and buy The Big Stuff. This is a bad idea. No one drives for hours just to buy sparklers.

I think states should allow the low level stuff, which would discourage most people from getting The Big Stuff. There will still be some jerks that want M-80s and skyrockets, but there won’t be nearly as many.

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I’m with ftg. Some fireworks are legal here, IIRC the only ones that are not legal are ones that explode above a certain height. Easier to keep track of where the sparks land that way.

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Yeah, cause injured bystanders are so much fun. :rolleyes:
:wally:

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Pretty much my take on most everything that some ‘concerned group’ wants the government to stop (except the cool part). They are dangerous, and I advocate hearing and eye protection just as if someone was shooting firearms. The only thing that I let my niece and nephew play with by themselves are the poppers that you throw on the ground.

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I live in Fort Worth, which is only 30 miles from Dallas, and yes indeedy, we do have some pretty severe drought conditions in some years. I can remember several instances of huge grass fires in the time that I’ve lived here. I wouldn’t say that ALL of the fires were caused by fireworks, but I’m sure that some were. And then there’s house fires, and the kid getting blinded or having his fingers blown off…because even though adults buy the fireworks, kids find them, or are allowed to use them.

I’d be in favor of allowing lowlevel fireworks (sparklers and such) to be sold. I’m not such a big fan of firecrackers, especially since I’ve had to listen to them for the last 3 nights. People here want to extend their fun, or just can’t wait til the Fourth, or whatever.

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I live in Wisconsin, and you can buy fireworks here - not the really big stuff like they sell in South Dakota, but big enough stuff that people from Minnesota come over in droves to buy it (just like they do for alcohol on Sundays).

My main complaint is people who light them off every night. Why not wait until the Fourth? One of my dogs hates fireworks, and it is pure hell for him. If everyone could wait until the Fourth to light off fireworks, I can put my dog in the basement beforehand (as I do on the Fourth anyways, since that is the date my town sets theirs off). But no, some people do it every night for two weeks beforehand, and my dog freaks. Just for that reason I wish they were harder to get around here.

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I think it would be much better to establish blackout days for fireworks, and make them legal. Quite frankly, it would give better awareness to the idea of not setting them off during droughts – just making everything illegal when you can get them in another state tends not to work.

They’re illegal here, but you’d never know that the week of the 4th (unless you work in law enforcement shudder)

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I’ve done work for the local fire brigade in the past, and have a friend who is fully qualified wrt fireworks, ordnance, and more. I’ve been told stories and seen photos of what happens when firewirks go wrong, and cannot help but feel that in many cases while it may be a bad thing for the individual concerned, it is in fact a valuable lesson for the group. ‘Joe got his hand blown off messing with fireworks: be very careful.’

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You can have my fireworks when you pry them from my smoking, shattered, dead hands.

Seriously, I feel that most bans go too far. M-80s, Jumping Jacks, and some other things are dangerous and should be banned.

The various cones, and cylinders which are set on the ground and produce the standard shower of sparks are safe if common sense is used.

Sparklers, Morning Glories, Snakes, etc are safe unless you’re a total moron.

I brought some flashpaper to the Central PA fest. One of the kids there aksed if he could try the ‘fire magic trick’. I said no, that it was very easy to burn yourself, and if you had small hands it was even easier.

BTW The RocketGuy (not the one who made the recent flight) invented a few handheld devices which use motors and light emitting diodes to produce some very cool effects without risk of burns.

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You say that now, however I am sure if it was YOUR house that was burned to the ground because of some drunken 4th of July party goer lighting bottle rockets, you probably would have a different take on matters. It is no fun losing everything you have to someone’s stupidity.

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Maryland’s fireworks regulations are on a county-by-county basis, probably like most states. Here in Baltimore City, they are illegal, although you’d never know it from all the the popping and whistling i’ve been hearing in this neighborhood over the past few weeks.

As for whether they should be illegal, i’m of two minds. On one hand, i tend to agree with the more libertarian, take-responsibility-for-your-own-actions approach. On the other hand, fireworks can injure innocent bystanders and can cause fires and other damage, so we need to be careful.

At a very minimum, in places where they are legal, their sale should be restricted to adults, and vendors who refuse to follow the rules on this and who continue to sell to minors should be subjected to very strict penalties. Adults who buy them for kids should also be punished.

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Yep. You are probably right. I’d also probably be very much against cars if I knew someone who was killed in an auto accident, or very much against drugs if I knew someone who OD’d. No, wait. Both of the above do apply, and I still like cars and think most drug laws should be repealed. As with just about anything, a little adult responsibility can solve a myria of problems. It is no fun to have stupid people kick down everything you have worked for. But the solution is education of the stupid and ignorant, not the banning of whatever tool they used to be stupid.

Tiggrkitty, if you lost your house due to drunks with fireworks, then I am sorry. But it doesn’t change my opinion.

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Agreed. You can find people who were killed or injured by all kinds of things. Some of them even become crusaders against it. If we were to allow all the people who were hurt by sports or hobbies or activities to dictate what the rest of us do, it would be a sad, boring world.

I am fully in favor of legalizing fireworks, with full understanding that some peopel will get hurt by them. I’m also fully in favor of softball games, and I’m sure some poor kid in the future will be hit by a ball and die.

The softball analogy is a good one, by the way, because softball games cause a very large number of injuries and even deaths. Ask an emergency room on a warm summer evening where their cases come from, and your going to find a lot of broken bones from soccer, football, baseball, skateboarding, you name it. Every ski hill has ski patrol, and almost every weekend they haul someone off the mountain who has been injured or even killed.

The only exception I’d make for fireworks is the same that we have for campfires or firepits - during especially dry fire seasons, their use should be restricted. Other than that, fire away.

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I’m 16, and have quite a stock of M-88’s, Roman Candles and Bottle Rockets. They’re illegal here in New York, but not across the border in Pennsylvania. And you only really have to LOOK 18. I agree, if any kid is dumb enough to blow their hand off with fireworks, it’s their own damn fault, but don’t let that ruin it for th rest of us. Some of us can be responsible (okay, fairly responsible).

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Whatever someone might feel about whether or not fireworks should be legal or illegal, i’m not sure i’d include under the label “fairly responsible” a person who travels to another state, purchases something that the law says he cannot legally purchase at his age, and then carries that something across state lines to a state where it’s illegal for anyone to have said item.

YMMV.