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"  The Fourth of July is almost here. It will be a day of pies, picnics, grills and anticipation of the sky darkening into a perfect backdrop, because there are few things Americans enjoy more than fireworks bursting in air.  Plenty of people are busily stocking up on everything for the perfect backyard display: sparklers, bottle rockets, Roman candles, fountains and finales. But every year, some of these backyard pyrotechnic displays run afoul of the law. It&amp;#039;s not hard to do. The laws surrounding fireworks can vary dramatically state by state, county by county and even across town lines. How did things get so confusing? States&amp;#039; Rights Fireworks rules may seem unnecessarily restrictive in some places, but they were much more intense just 50 years ago when several states had full or partial bans of fireworks, Robert Flanagan of Black Cat Fireworks says. &amp;quot;[The states] closed up in the &amp;#039;30s and &amp;#039;40s when we didn&amp;#039;t have good regulations.&amp;quot; Fuses, materials and even the amount of explosives in seemingly similar products could vary dramatically. But in the years since, the fireworks industry and the Consumer Products Safety Commission have been working to make fireworks safer and more regulated. According to Julie Heckman, the executive director of the American Pyrotechnics Association, a trade group that represents the industry, many states began loosening their fireworks laws around the year 2000 and continued the trend as they realized how much revenue fireworks taxes could bring to their states. So today the rules run the gamut. Wyoming, for example, complies with federal regulations but makes no special rules at the state level, leaving fireworks regulations up to local governments. Other states, meanwhile, have passed extensive legislation to restrict the ages of people that buy or sell fireworks, or allow fireworks to be sold only on a few days each year (usually around the July 4 or New Year&amp;#039;s Eve). Just four maintain a full ban on consumer fireworks: Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Delaware.  State Lines The trouble with state regulations, though, is that they end at the state line. None of these states with outright bans have eliminated all consumer fireworks, primarily because their neighbors have no qualms about selling fireworks to people from out of state. &amp;quot;Massachusetts is just furious that people can go over to New Hampshire and buy fireworks,&amp;quot; Heckman says. And in New York, people regularly travel just across the state line to Pennsylvania to purchase fireworks there. It has become such a common practice that the police forces of New York and New Jersey are on the lookout for people that attempt to re-enter either state with newly purchased fireworks. The NYPD has even been known to monitor the parking lots of Pennsylvania fireworks stores for cars with New York plates, trail them until they reach the New York state line and then stop them for crossing the border.  But while New Yorkers can drive to Pennsylvania to buy fireworks, Pennsylvanians can&amp;#039;t procure pyrotechnics in their own state. The state will gladly allow fireworks sales as long as they&amp;#039;re not to Pennsylvania residents. Similarly, Ohio requires people who purchase fireworks to promise to take them out of the state within a set period of time\u2014that way both states get to enjoy the revenue while exporting the fireworks themselves beyond their borders.  Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee and a contributing editor to Popular Mechanics, says that these odd laws are the opposite of the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Constitution. That clause says that states can&amp;#039;t discriminate against non-residents in favor of their own citizens. &amp;quot;But in this case the people that are being discriminated against are the voters of the states; if they don&amp;#039;t like it they can presumably get it changed.&amp;quot; And if you thought fireworks laws couldn&amp;#039;t get weirder, along comes Florida. In the Sunshine State, consumer fireworks are only allowed for use in the railroad industry &amp;quot;for signal purposes or illumination or when used in quarrying or for blasting or other industrial use&amp;quot; or in agriculture &amp;quot;to be used solely and exclusively in frightening birds from agricultural works and fish hatcheries.&amp;quot; If you buy fireworks in Florida, you have to sign a waiver stating that you will be using fireworks solely for those purposes. Hand In the Fireworks (and No One Gets Hurt) There are plenty of places around the nation where the restrictions get even tighter on a local level. Prince George&amp;#039;s County in Maryland, for instance, has banned all fireworks, even though the state of Maryland does allow some.  In an effort to keep their citizens law-abiding, Prince George&amp;#039;s Fire and EMS department&amp;#039;s Mark Brady says the county has been offering a fireworks amnesty program for the past several years. The fire department encourages residents to turn in any fireworks without penalty, and it actually sends out members of the fire department to people&amp;#039;s houses to collect the illicit fireworks. When it first started the program, the county offered incentives for turning in fireworks, like tickets to the Bowie Baysox minor league baseball team. &amp;quot;Since we stopped offering the incentive there were relatively few calls,&amp;quot; Brady says. While many local governments have permanent antifireworks laws on the books, some only issue bans temporarily. These tend to be places where fireworks bans make a lot of sense. Many states in the Southwest have laws on the books allowing fireworks to be sold and used, but are urging their citizens to avoid lighting anything over the holiday weekend. The weather in that region has been unbearably hot and dry\u2014perfect conditions for wildfires, like the fire currently raging in New Mexico. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think its unreasonable to tell people that they can&amp;#039;t shoot off fireworks during times or in places where it might create a fire,&amp;quot; Reynolds says. Breaking the Law Of course, people do get caught and charged with lighting fireworks in areas where they are illegal. But most often these charges makes the news when fireworks are out of season, and the fireworks enthusiasts built their own.  In February of this year, an 18-year-old high school senior made headlines after setting off homemade fireworks made out of chemicals and toilet paper tubes around his hometown of Lynn, Mass. He was arrested and charged with a two felonies: possessing an explosive device and &amp;quot;hiding, placing or throwing&amp;quot; an explosive device. In another 2011 case, in Boulder County, Colo., a 50-year-old man was arrested and charged with the felony &amp;quot;possession of an incendiary device,&amp;quot; after his neighbors called the police as he was firing off his homemade fireworks. They were reportedly concerned that the combination of dry weather in their area and the fireworks would start a fire. Police confiscated both the fireworks and the building materials.   Both home fireworks builds might have been unwise, but on the surface, felony charges seem a little extreme for fireworks enthusiasts. To U.T.&amp;#039;s Glenn Reynolds, though, it&amp;#039;s mostly legal posturing. &amp;quot;One reason they bring the higher charge is so they can get some leverage [over the defendant],&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;There are people that think it is unethical to bring a higher charge than is really merited just to get leverage, but it&amp;#039;s pretty common.&amp;quot; Indeed, both men pled down their charges from felonies to misdemeanors involving the possession of unlawful fireworks, and paid a fine.  Even the officially sanctioned public fireworks displays put on by trained professionals aren&amp;#039;t immune to legal trouble. San Diego almost had to cancel its July 4 fireworks show at La Jolla after the Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation, an environmental group, brought a case against the event to require environmental assessments before the show could continue. A judge ruled in favor of the environmental group, but then granted a 90-day stay that allowed the show to continue, at least for this year. But after the Fourth the community fireworks organization intends to continue to fight the ruling.  This holiday weekend, many Americans will flock to the fancy pyrotechnic display downtown (while it&amp;#039;s still allowed), and no doubt plenty of others will fire off some fireworks at home\u2014whether or not the law says it&amp;#039;s okay. Reynolds says that if you break the law you should be prepared to take the consequences. &amp;quot;But that doesn&amp;#039;t mean the law isn&amp;#039;t a stupid law,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;And for the most part I think it is. We&amp;#039;ve rounded the sharp edges off so much of life these days in the modern world that I don&amp;#039;t think its so bad to have a place where people should have a chance to experience a little bit of danger.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/outdoors/a6763/the-bewildering-web-of-us-fireworks-laws/>