In relative safety, it seems, the East Valley got through its first Fourth of July with personal fireworks allowed to be sold but not ignited in most communities.
This wasn’t because new local ordinances banning them worked. In fact, it appears they hardly worked at all.
As Mike Sakal reported in Wednesday’s Tribune, there was little damage but plenty of complaints for local police to investigate, but with virtually no arrests. So a good number of violators were setting off personal fireworks uninhibited by the threat of police showing up.
We were in this situation, of course, because this year the Arizona Legislature ended a decades-old ban on the purchase and possession of personal fireworks in this state. The premise was that they can be handled safely by simply following the instructions.
(Certainly the use of hedge trimmers and lawnmowers in backyards would be less harmful if more of us read their instructions before using them, too, but I digress.)
The new law allowed cities and other localities to regulate or ban such fireworks being lighted within their boundaries, however. Most Valley cities, Mesa and Gilbert being qualified exceptions, responded with outright bans, meaning that while fireworks were for sale on virtually every busy street corner, you could do nothing with them when you got home except put them on a shelf and admire them.
Yeah, right.
The logic at area city halls probably went like this: We got along without personal fireworks just fine until this year, so why have them? Firefighters don’t like them, so why not just keep them out? (Of course firefighters don’t like cigarette butts, either, but that’s not going to make them go away.)
The answer is because the barn door has been open and the horse gone for some time. We don’t legally forbid ourselves and our children any number of traditional backyard family activities that are potentially dangerous, from birthday parties where we are voluntarily blindfolded and handed baseball bats to take wild, haphazard swings at piñatas to squirting too much lighter fluid on a barbecue flame.
To no one’s surprise, certainly not to the police and fire departments, what many East Valley residents did last weekend was to violate the law by setting their personal fireworks off anyway.
This means that East Valley residents in the main were able to worry little about being arrested while they handled personal fireworks at least as well as they do those piñata bats or cans of lighter fluid.
Now, what if the cities actually tried to address the fireworks issue realistically? That is, with the new state law letting fireworks entrepreneurs display their wares under tents all over town, why not pass a local law at least as detailed and reasonable as, well, as a parking-an-RV-on-your-property ordinance?
Many communities require that if you’re going to park a recreational vehicle on your property, that it be parked on concrete, asphalt or gravel. No dirt, no grass; nothing beneath a hot engine that might ignite.
How about an ordinance that lets people light small personal fireworks — children under the age of, say, 15 or 16 must be in the presence of an adult — only on such safe surfaces?
Such a law will also help keep people who know the cops are out on holiday fireworks patrol from taking their legally purchased but illegal-in-town trove of goodies to the one place no one wants them to be taken:
Out in the desert, where one tiny little boom-boom can create a huge, devastating, possibly deadly wildfire.
Certainly allowing the use of fireworks might lead to some abuse of them, including in a handful of cases the destruction of property or injury or death, just as allowing cars on the road does. But the way the current legal situation of buy-’em-’but-don’t-light-’em is set up, illegal use is fairly rampant. It’s enough to keep police busy on the Fourth of July weekend, while people light fireworks secretly — and perhaps even more dangerously — wherever they believe they can get away with it.
At least a legal fireworks framework will be one more people could follow, confident that as they participate in this time-honored way of celebrating their freedom, they wouldn’t be breaking the law.
• Mark J. Scarp (mscarp1@cox.net) is a Tribune contributing columnist whose column appears on Sundays.
RationalHuman posted at 11:23 am on Tue, Jul 12, 2011.
NothingButTheTruth, I agree with your post.
Everything you said was Rational. ;)
NothingButTheTruth posted at 8:38 pm on Mon, Jul 11, 2011.
Well said Rich. Very funny.
Rich posted at 6:21 pm on Mon, Jul 11, 2011.
I actually thought it a bit ridiculous that people who think we are smart enough to vote for them also seem to think we are too stupid to legally handle a sparkler.
NothingButTheTruth posted at 1:03 pm on Mon, Jul 11, 2011.
Here in Mesa where the use of legal fireworks were allowed June 28th through July 4th, and will be allowed December 30th through January 1st, we saw an increase in fireworks use. We didn't burn down so I guess all you people who thought the sky was about to fall were in fact wrong. The nanny state doesn't ever really make you safer, it only makes you less free. Being able to legally buy fireworks but not use them doesn't make any sense to me. It would make sense that some people would take their fireworks to a less safe area where they have less chance of being caught. Therefor yes, making use legal state wide very well could reduce the fire danger. Seems reasonable to me. How bout you rational?
RationalHuman posted at 10:01 am on Mon, Jul 11, 2011.
How exactly does making fireworks illegal reduce the fire danger?
The same way making criminal alien border crossers illegal reduced their...oh, nevermind! LOL
annenup posted at 6:45 am on Mon, Jul 11, 2011.
the legislature loves chaos and in Arizona the no government at all idea is popular with the rabble
storminnorman posted at 12:33 am on Mon, Jul 11, 2011.
Hey Rational
I have been here for 47 years live on the outskirts of the valley and the increase was substantial. Its only pure luck that one of those idiots shooting off rockets didnt catch the desert on fire. and by the way they were still being shot off 2 days after the fourth.In mesa where they are only legal on the 4th.. never seen that before. the horse is out of the barn and even tho rockets are not legal at all
to some they are all legal now because they are to stupid to read the law and dont care anyway. they need to be all 100% illegal all the time.
Fireworks in Arizona make as much sense as a rubber dam.. both are idiotic
Even texas where its they are typically legal banned them this year because of fire danger.. What does Ariz do.. make them legal..
scyntax posted at 10:55 am on Sun, Jul 10, 2011.
An example of a truly idiotic situation. Why would people buy fireworks if they weren't going to use them? Surely law makers knows this. I was in a WalMart the other day looking at their display of "legal to buy, illegal to use" fireworks. I saw what appeared to be a large mortar that was ripped open exposing all the fuses inside. What would stop someone from dropping a lighted match into that mortar?
Allowing the sale of, but not the use of fireworks is a Catch-22 in it's purest form.
RationalHuman posted at 9:28 am on Sun, Jul 10, 2011.
"So a good number of violators were setting off personal fireworks uninhibited by the threat of police showing up."
Just like every July 4th and New Year's in the Valley for the past 40 years...nothing new here.
"We were in this situation, of course, because this year the Arizona Legislature ended a decades-old ban on the purchase and possession of personal fireworks in this state."
So this article is about nothing then? This "situation" was no different this year than the years before...Mark, are you new to the Valley? I have to ask, because I've lived here for over 40 years and I saw absolutely ZERO increase in use.