Free the fireworks! Can individual citizens be trusted to celebrate Independence Day with a bang?

AuthorBeato, Greg
PositionColumns

OUTSIDE OF HARDCORE porn, is there any art form as static as a Fourth of July fireworks display? Once you've seen one, you've seen them all, yet year after year, like stoned zombies staring at screensavers, we tilt our heads to the sky and watch amateurs and professionals alike stage the pyrotechnical equivalents of gang bangs. If a dozen silver comets shooting across the heavens are spectacular, 100 are even better! And why not throw some crimson, gold, and turquoise into the mix too? Thus the spectrum expands, the explosions multiply, the choreography grows increasingly byzantine--but the basic plot remains unchanged.

So why are we so crazy about fireworks? In 1976, the year the United States celebrated its bicentennial, American patriots blew up 29 million pounds of fireworks. In 2006, the American Pyrotechnic Association reports, we exploded nearly 10 times that amount--in part, no doubt, because 10 times as many events have become fireworks appropriate. NFL games, casino open-hags, political conventions, weddings, and even a few funerals now get the sort of schlock-and-aww pageantry we once reserved for the Fourth.

Industry boosters typically attribute the growing popularity of fireworks to better safety standards and fewer regulations prohibiting their use. But the pyrotechnics still do injure people; 9,200 Americans required medical attention due to fireworks injuries in 2006, according to Consumer Product Safety Commission statistics. (In contrast, 220,500 people suffered toy-related injuries that year.)And in most states, regulation remains strong. While prosecution is mainly reserved for individuals caught selling products that exceed Washington's safety guidelines for "consumer fireworks"--e.g., M-80s, quarter sticks, and professional display fireworks that require a federal permit--penalties for much lesser offenses can be comically severe. In New York, for example, you can get three months in the slammer for possessing $50 worth of sparklers.

Thus, while fireworks may splatter the sky with every neon hue Chinese chemists can summon from strontium and copper chloride, they exist in a legal and moral gray zone. They're kind of safe and sort of permissible, but also sort of dangerous and kind of against the law. All of which, of course, makes them immensely appealing. They offer us a chance to engage in semi-illicit behavior without excessive risk of punishment or serious injury, at least until the NYPD makes zero sparkler...

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