Fireworks are freedom?

[brewer]

Don't be silly. Guns and bombs are freedom. Fireworks are freedom wanna be's.

[Jesster]

I grew up in a place where they were banned. We had enough forest fires nearby even without them. I never missed them, to be honest.

[vorlon13]

I grew up in a place where they were banned. We had enough forest fires nearby even without them. I never missed them, to be honest.

You haven't lived until you've scotch taped a bug to a bottle rocket and sent it into space.

[brewer]

I grew up in a place where they were banned. We had enough forest fires nearby even without them. I never missed them, to be honest.

I grew up with them, that was my favorite holiday for years. I can't recall a single fire in our town attributable to fireworks but I'm sure that there were some. They probably were just not notable. That does not mean that there was not property damage, mostly unintentional,...... mostly. 

I remember more personal injury reports. Most small, some with devastating loss. If I didn't have a fuse burn(s) it was not a good holiday. I had little respect for the small stuff but was taught to have great respect for the big stuff. 

I've now out grown that. Or maybe it's that the fun I experience with explosives has just changed.

[Ravenshire]

I'm torn on the issue. I still enjoy setting off fireworks, though that may just be the kid in me who refuses to grow up. But, I also understand that there are potential property damage/personal injury issues with them. I do know that a $500 fine is meaningless to some redneck asshole that just dropped $2500 on a shit ton of fireworks. Those things ain't cheap any more. The last time I bought fireworks, the cheapest thing in the store was $3 pack of firecrackers, 10 to a pack, and there were people there with shopping carts full of the stuff. When you look at the states where they are mostly (Oregon) or completely (Colorado) banned, you sure as fuck can't tell from the first through the tenth or so. One guy I talked to in Corvallis, after getting busted with illegals, getting them confiscated and getting fined, said he was going "back to the house to get some more." He was planning on going to a nearby park with his kids and setting them off there instead of along the waterside where they could see the city's show.

Maybe some areas could be reserved for people who want to set off their own shows (or just blow the hell out of some tin cans) and some seriously stiff fines ($10,000 and up depending on what you're setting off) for anyone setting them off elsewhere would help curtail the problem. A slap on the wrist $500 fine isn't gonna do shit beyond generating a little revenue for the local cop shop. Unless it's made illegal to import them into the country, and it's made a federal crime akin to smuggling to have them drop shipped right to your house, they aren't going away. Wyoming has three or four state parks where it is legal to use them, on the July 4th only (though I don't know what kind of fine structure they have), and they seem to have far fewer problems with them than we do here, even though Wyoming sells them everywhere, all year long.

[Fireball]

I have many fond memories of setting off fireworks as a kid. I also used to get shopping bags of magnesium shavings from my friends, and igniting them in all kinds of scenarios, some of which have led to personal eye damage. For those of you who don't know, magnesium fires emit ultraviolet light that is damaging to the eye. I also used to manufacture my own explosives, as a teenager (yes I was that friend of your son- the one who got burned when we manufactured that sulfuric acid!). I also have hearing problems as a result, though it may be from not using hearing protection when I was into drag/street racing cars- another vice I have since overcome). Hard to sort it all out, you know? At some point in our lives, we have to realize that the things we did in our youth are actually deleterious to our health, and not to let our children do them. This may mean that the things we did back in the day are no longer acceptable for our children. OR, we need to train them on the appropriate protective equipment, like when I made them wear when we went to the gun range.

[The Industrial Atheist]

We have people here letting off fireworks some years any night within a month of the 4th. This place is so damn poor I don't know how people afford it. Starve their kids and/or themselves maybe? People here are kind of quasi redneck even though we're nowhere near the south.

[Sterben]

Fireworks are a cheap ploy to keep people happy. It doesn't mean anything; a flag is piece of cloth, fireworks a dangerous toy, a medal/trophy is a celebration of ones actions. What does all this have to do with fireworks? If you think about it, to many people fall for this type flattery. If we use logic, all these things separate us from what it important in life. Being the best in something cause you have a medal means nothing. People can get a trophy/medal for eating the most food items. Should we really be rewarding such behavior?

As fireworks are concerned, they make a huge mess along side causing people's pets scared. Has far as the 4th of July is concerned, be modest and don't be the idiot who buys a bunch of fireworks cause your a proud American. Instead, just have a modest thought about how George Washington helped create a new nation. Don't let his fake great all around historical appearance fool you. He was a man with a lot of flaws, as all of them where.

I'm only posting the prior paragraph because I know some overbearing proud American will say "Fire works were displayed when we became our own nation." or something like that. I'm aware of the Star Bangle Banner, and I'm not trying to pick a fight with any so called "Patriots". In short it's not a good idea to trust people buying fireworks for the 4th of July, and or any other time.

I don't have many happy memories of the 4th of July, once you see it once there is no need to see it again; we should be smart enough to realize that parlor tricks of chemistry is nothing to impressed about. Leave it to the professionals to set off fireworks and do not attempt to build your mortar to launch them.

[vorlon13]

Scariest thing I did involving fire (not even fireworks, just fire) was to set a very large dead tree on fire at the height of summer. The damn thing burned for a week, and even though it was fairly wet and green out when I set the fire, in a few days the fire danger was much higher and increased as the summer heat dried out everything.

Fortunately, nothing bad happened, but the last several days of the fire were very nerve racking.

The fire, although I started it near the ground, raced up the dead wood and essentially burned the tree from the top down. There was a steady drizzle of burning embers, twigs and branches falling from it until nearly the last day when it was just the trunk and roots burning.

A bit of good luck, despite it being near the house, it was far enough up the valley there wasn't much wind impinging upon it, so it wasn't blasting fiery bits all over the county.

When it was all done I had gotten rid of 95% of the tree, I just wish I had waited till winter to do it.