Those wacky fireworks laws

In Pennsylvania, it is illegal for a fireworks store to sell fireworks to Pennsylvania residents.
However it is legal to sell to out-of-state residents. So the border stores market heavily to the residents of the other states - like New Jersey.
In New Jersey it is illegal to own, transport and set off fireworks.

So the border stores legally make money by encouraging illegal activity.

 

If you're driving from Missouri to Iowa you know you're getting close to the border when you start seeing fireworks stands. Fireworks are illegal in Iowa but not Missouri.

 

For a while in Indiana, you could buy certain "illegal" fireworks in Indiana (the tame stuff like sparklers were OK), but you had to take them out of state. They made you sign an affadavit that you would not set them off in Indiana, which of course was enforced about 0.000000000000000001% of the time.

 

Fireworks are big in Hawaii on the Fourth, but they are Bicentennial-level on New Year's Eve (the Asian cultural influence).

One problem: selling anything really fun is illegal. So the cops raid the stands and confiscate the good stuff. And sell it themselves.

Good times.

 

The fireworks law in New Jersey is pretty much a joke. In college, I used to stop at the stores in Tennessee and load up on my trips home for the summer. On July 4, we'd have a big blowout. If I'd been smarter I probably could have made a killing in the fireworks smuggling racket.
One year, my best friend and I were shooting some off at an elementary school near his house (closest big open field around). After about 10 minutes a cop car comes rolling across the grass right toward us. They just told us to pack up and move along.
Always got the sense nobody gave a shit as long as you weren't lighting off M-80s in mailboxes, or doing it at midnight. I think the only reason someone called the cops on us that time was because it was almost 10 p.m. in a relatively quiet neighborhood.

 

I fucking hate fireworks and I'm going to go kick one of my neighbor's asses who has been lighting them up every five minutes all day right now.

 

There is a fireworks store about five minutes from the Pa./N.Y. border as you're coming up Rt. 15. I passed it when I was moving back here and considered loading up before crossing the border.

 

Man, how I love fireworks. A couple weeks ago I loaded up on them and I've been lighting them off every five minutes or so all day. Hopefully, it'll piss the neighbors off.

 

I grew up about 30 miles on the good side of the Pennsylvania -- in New York -- and my friends took advantage of that idiot law. I once had a friend, a Pennsylvanian, stay over for the Fourth one year, and when we crossed the border for the fireworks store, she was turned away at the door. She couldn't even walk through the doors.

My friends filled a cart with the useless sticks -- what's the point of fireworks, really? Anyone wanna light a $50 bill and run? -- and we took off. We almost didn't let her light one because, you know, she was one of them.

 

I'll give you a dollar if you come down and take care of the inbred family who feels compeled to light them off -- from 5 p.m. on the 3rd to midnight on the 6th -- setting off the eight dogs in adjacent houses, including their own two.

 

Damn you and your White Boy Day!

 

When I lived in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, there were so many fireworks set off, the end of every block had a street piled high with spent firework papers. Nothing safer than firing bottle rockets down a crowded street. Then again, as a kid my cousins and I fired them into the forest at our family's cottage in Upper Michigan, so that wasn't exactly smart, either.