Tuesday, May 27, 2014

What can I blow up >:) Fireworks Laws



Fireworks season is coming up and you may be wondering what can you blow up on your street without spending a night in jail. This blog post is only about consumer fireworks. The federal regulations involve how much explosives are used in the firework and are rather complicated. This website gives a basic description: https://www.atf.gov/publications/factsheets/factsheet-fireworks.html
Within the federal regulations states and towns make their own laws. In green states on the map above, if your area does not have any additional laws, all of the federally legal consumer fireworks are legal without local approval. Which means if you have them you don't have to ask to light them off on your own property. In blue states, if your local area doesn't have any additional regulations, you can light off more than half of the types of federally legal consumer fireworks without asking permission. In yellow states you need to ask permission to light off more than half of the types of consumer fireworks that are federally legal. In the red states you may not light off any fireworks without getting approval from your local area and possibly the state. Fireworks include pretty much anything that is supposed to combust, but they have been conveniently been grouped into categories:
Bottle Rockets
Sky Rockets
Roman Candles
firecrackers
sparklers (that's right, if you live in a red state every child has probably broken this law)
smoke and punk (this includes snakes and smoke bombs)
Fountains
Missiles
Novelties Crackle and Strobe
Parachutes
Wheels and Spinner
Sky Flyers
Display Shells
Aerial Items (cakes)
Laws change constantly so their might be and probably are errors in this list, on top of this I have not included areas smaller than states which often make their own regulations. My map is based off of this website: http://www.usfireworks.biz/legal/legal.htm the best thing you can do is look up your state and towns specific laws, Connecticut's are very clear, sparklers, fountains, and nothing else. http://www.ct.gov/despp/lib/despp/public_information_files/brochures/tipsfireworks.pdf

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