by Becky Akers
Becky Akers is a historian and freelance writer.
As we approach July 4 each year, the bureaucratic busybodies kick into high gear, warning us against a hallowed tradition and its immense fun. Fireworks are a wonderful way to celebrate Independence Day, New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg admitted on June 8, but it's critical that we leave it to the professionals. . . . In the hands of an untrained individual, fireworks can have deadly consequences. Apparently, John Adams's famous exhortation that untrained individuals celebrate the country's birthday with Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other cuts no ice with the mayor and his ilk. On this, as on so many matters, poor John's advice is far too radical for our safety-cap-and-security-camera age.
During the next weeks, then, Leviathan's legions will sourly slander fireworks. State and local governments will portray them as the pyrotechnic equivalent of nicotine: the surest route to ruin for those innocents lured into lighting them. And that danger, of course, is why Our Masters must protect us from them. We little children can’t possibly judge whether the glory and excitement justify the risk of lighting the fuse. No, for complicated choices like that — actually, for all choices nowadays, however personal or inconsequential — we have elected and appointed officials pathetically eager to decide for us. Increasingly, they say no. They back their prohibition with draconian fines, theft of our fireworks and the cars in which we transport them, and even arrest. Government's protection is always control in disguise.
Fireworks used to bedazzle New York City not only on the Fourth of July, but also during Chinese New Year in February. Chinatown sizzled in celebration. Exuberant color streaked the sky during the dragon parade, while bystanders lit firecrackers. It was wild, it was grand, and the slight risk in walking the streets while explosions popped around you was exhilarating. It was illegal, too, but who cared? Then came the Rudolph Giuliani, in which no law was too totalitarian for enforcement. Since then, Our Masters annually smear fireworks as dastardly devils plotting to blow the unwary to smithereens. Bloomberg sternly admonishes: We're doing everyone a favor by enforcing [anti-fireworks penalties] because the stark reality is that in the hands of amateurs, fireworks can be extremely dangerous.
What Else Is Dangerous?
Hmmm. Fireworks have something in common with the public schools, then, though the latter are extremely dangerous in anyone’s hands. Fireworks killed only 16 people nationwide in 1999, while sending an estimated 8,500 folks to emergency rooms. Meanwhile, there were 32 school-associated violent deaths from July 1, 1999, through June 30, 2000. During that same period, 71 percent of public elementary and secondary schools experienced at least one violent incident . . . (including rape, sexual battery other than rape, physical attacks or fights with and without a weapon, threats of physical attack with and without a weapon, and robbery with and without a weapon). In all, approximately 1,466,000 such incidents were reported in public schools.
Whoa! Kinda puts fireworks in the shade, doesn’t it? I eagerly await a proscription of the perilous public schools from politicians preoccupied with protecting us.
Alas, rather than abolishing its dangerous educational gulags, New York City instead formed a Joint Fireworks Task Force in 1995, consisting of members of the NYPD, the New York City Fire Department's Bureau of Fire Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the Nassau and Suffolk County Police Departments. That many bureaucrats joining hands endangers far more people and property than all the nation's skyrockets put together; sure enough, so far this year 769 cases of illegal fireworks have been confiscated [i.e., stolen] by the NYPD Vice [Vice? For fireworks?] Enforcement Division . . .; more than 60 people have been arrested for possessing or trafficking in illegal fireworks; and 31 vehicles have been seized [i.e., stolen]. The City will also pay $1,000 to those who snitch on their pyrotechnic friends and neighbors. Between the Task Force and the snitches, there were only 8 . . . recorded injuries last year. That’s down from a whopping 56 injuries a decade earlier in a city of eight million. What would politicians do if they couldn’t overreact?
This year New York City is pulling out the few remaining stops. With heavy-handed threats its rulers are cowing residents who once considered access to sparklers and Roman candles an inalienable right: If you choose to break the law by transporting, selling, buying or using illegal fireworks: . . . We can and will arrest you; We can and will confiscate your car and/or business. But, like guns and drugs and everything else Our Masters have banned, fireworks still trickle into the city. A few hardy souls traipse all the way to Pennsylvania for their fountains and rockets. This eats at politicians who crave, need, and expect obedience. Indeed, they cannot even admit that obedience is the issue here: they'd rather suppose us ignorant. And so they are squandering our taxes on a mobile billboard, a truck emblazoned with Fireworks are Illegal in New York, with the usual threat to steal our fireworks lettered under the NYPD's insignia. This gas-guzzler will be driving Route 80 across New Jersey to the Pennsylvania border each day from now until July 4. And what is this costing taxpayers? One company in the mobile-billboard business charges $500-800 a day to cruise New York and New Jersey, with another $1,200-$1,600 in production costs.
Determined to squelch whatever holiday spirit survives this onslaught, Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan says, My office is committed to prosecuting those arrested for flouting our laws and endangering themselves and others with illegal fireworks.
And a happy Fourth to you, too.