The fools next door, across the street, and all the way down
the block on both sides were bursting cherry bombs, M80s, bottle rockets, and
handguns until long after 1:30 a.m. This morning, they greeted 7:30 a.m. with a
handful of cherry bombs and several strings of firecrackers, just to start the
day off right. It’s a good thing I’m a believer in gun control and own no
semi-automatic weapon, or I might surely have committed a grave crime indeed
and left the world and my neighborhood a better place for it.
Kansas City is the second biggest fireworks market after San
Antonio, although all unlicensed private fireworks displays in the city limits (and
most of the suburbs) are illegal. Fourth of July here is absolutely miserable
for dogs, cats, and sane people. I remember one year when my husband and I were
returning from a trip late on Fourth of July and the city’s skyline looked like
a war zone, clouded in the smoke of battle and explosions. Kansas City offers
many legal, lavish, and free public fireworks displays, but folks will insist
on spending hundreds of dollars at the fireworks stands set up just outside the
city and suburban limits to blast away in their own front yards and the streets
outside their homes.
Every year homes burn, often to the ground, and people,
often children, end up in the emergency room with major injuries from
fireworks. But still, the fools buy them and set them off (while drunk) on
every street in the large, sprawling metropolitan area, usually with a passel
of kids running around among the minor explosives, leaving tons of fireworks
trash all over the sidewalks and streets for someone else to clean up. Fourth
of July is dreaded by firemen, police, EMTs, and sane people who’ve retained
their hearing because of what the illegal and stupid use of fireworks brings.
I love celebrations, and picnics, family gatherings,
barbecues, cookouts, and block parties are wonderful ways to celebrate
Independence Day. There are ceremonies that honor servicemen and others who
have served their communities and ceremonies where speakers and politicians
recount our history (albeit whitewashed) as a country, praise the wisdom and
courage of our forefathers, and speak to the importance of honoring our country’s
ideals today. And often there are spectacular, legal, public fireworks displays
put on by professionals using all the safeguards that have been developed
through the years. Why can’t people settle for one or all of these ways to
celebrate and leave the illegal fireworks alone?
And why, oh why must they start with the illegal fireworks
in late June and run with them until the 8th or 10th of
July? How are we celebrating the foundation of a nation of based on law when we
break the law in front of our kids and encourage them to do the same? What kind
of example are we setting when we do something like that? On the Fourth of July,
we turn into a nation of scofflaws—and the most unpleasant of neighbors
I know I’m not the only one who hates this idiocy. My Twitter
and Facebook feeds last night were both full of friends all over the country
complaining about the idiots near them who were blasting away and the damage
this was doing to their hearing, their nerves, and their animals. The police
can’t arrest a whole city, even when the citizens are openly breaking the law.
It’s a logistical nightmare. Laws and the civil society that they make possible
only work when most of the citizens of a place will abide by them. As we become
more lawless in this way, doesn’t it make it easier for that slide into
lawlessness as a society that everyone worries about?
The best Fourth of July I ever spent was in Oxford, England.
No one over there even knows the day is different, and Britain certainly doesn’t
celebrate the occasion of losing its top colony. Next year, I think I’m going
to have to spend Fourth of July in some other country to avoid the cretins who
are wrecking it in this one.
How do you feel about all the illegal private fireworks on
Fourth of July?
