It’s that time of year again when city governments and fire departments all across the nation post videos begging their citizens not to shoot off fireworks come this July 4.
Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, St. Louis, and others spent the week leading up to Independence Day broadcasting the dangers of fireworks. Local governments like these insist that if you choose to indulge the primal draw to big things that go “boom,” you put your family, your neighbors, your pets, and the environment at risk.
If and when that call to compassion doesn’t work, they resort to threatening fines for something as small as a toddler waving around a sparkler. The city of Plano, Texas even resorted to posting a cringey video on social media, reminding residents that pyrotechnics on the most patriotic day of the year are a “hard NO,” especially inside city limits.
Except they aren’t. As the Plano post advertises, there will be a city-sponsored “spectacular fireworks show” just four miles from the city’s downtown.
Nothing says “freedom” like welcoming all of the Plano taxpayers who are barred from doing their own gun powder poppers to celebrate the anniversary of America’s decision to buck an overreaching and overtaxing government to a government-sanctioned event funded by their pocketbooks.
Which brings me to my point. Fireworks can absolutely carry harmful and sometimes fatal consequences if they are mishandled. Some risks, however, are worth taking — especially if they are done in the spirit of independence that paved the way for our country’s birth.
As silly as it may sound, shooting off fireworks means something to Americans. They are the perfect encapsulation of John Adams’ 1776 letter to his wife Abigail calling for “Pomp and Parade with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more” to celebrate the States’ independence.
That symbolism is why there was so much pushback when little tyrants tried to cancel the celebratory explosions due to a lab-leaked virus in 2020. Just as Americans didn’t need President Joe Biden’s permission to honor the USA’s beginnings during the peak of corporate media-fueled Covid hysteria, they shouldn’t need the government’s rubber stamp to shoot off a few bottle rockets come dusk on this July 4.
It’s important to note that destruction for the sake of destruction, as we’ve seen with the leftist riots that rocked the country in 2020 and tried to make their reappearance over illegal immigration recently, is un-American. Shooting off Roman Candles and artillery shell firecrackers with your friends and family with a bucket of water or hose nearby is, in the words of my colleague Elle Purnell, however, a “grand old American pastime.”
Crotchety neighbors can handle one night (or, let’s be honest, one week) of inconvenient noise if it means preserving the national pride that inspired the founders in the first place. The fireworks they hear popping around the suburbs and in fields skirting cities are a righteous rebellion of sorts; a modern-day American’s tea-in-the-harbor moment.
This is the land of the free, home of the brave, after all. And you’ve never truly lived if you haven’t had to high-tail it away from a freshly lit firecracker as a crowd of your closest loved ones look on.
For the love of all things bright and beautiful, don’t be stupid about your choice to partake in the pageantry. Channel the founders’ wisdom when you choose how, when, and where you light those cheap Chinese fuses. But don’t let a little PSA on your local news channel or Instagram dissuade you from lighting them altogether.
As a new parent, I may come to regret this call to cacophony. But I love my country too much to see it succumb to government-led crackdowns on good, plain, patriotic fun. This July 4, let freedom ring!