Law-Abiding Citizens

I will admit to feeling some anxiety this past week with regards to the highest court of the land going Rogue on our legal system and all, but given my experience this evening, the Fourth of July, I'm heartened by the rather flagrant flaunting of lawbreaking exhibited by my neighbors.  

Mind you, I am not a professional pyrotechnician.  I am, in fact, someone who does possess a Boy Scout Fireman's Chit, so I'm trained in what to do when one is responsible for a campfire.  Because I'm a relatively cautious individual, I do some interpretations based on that knowledge.  I am, for example, inclined to insure that any fireworks that I would be lighting would be at least ten, and more likely twenty, feet from any witnesses.  I would also, for example, stick with what are known as ground fountains, because they're legal.  They're not designed to fly into the air and explode.  

I would not sit small children - children under the age of three, I estimate - within five feet of the spot where I had set fireworks I intended to launch into the air.  And, because I'm sure some folks will insist I'm paranoid, were I going to be responsible for launching certain fireworks into the air, the first step I would take is design and build a rack of metal piles - heavy metal pipes, that is, not bleeping electrical conduit - which would function as the barrel for the launching of the firework.  

I'd probably be one of those utterly lame people who would create a sort of breach through which I could lite the fuse on the fireworks, and do so in such a way that any flames which came out of the tube's breach would also be directed away from the audience, who would be seated at least forty feet away from the launch location.  Which would, I'm certain, be built in such a way as to insure it could not fall over and direct any fireworks horizontal, rather than vertical.

I expect I would probably build some sort of earthwork or concrete berm, which would be a location where the launch tubes would be attached.  Ideally, I'd launch out over water, preferably a very large body of water that might see any rockets that failed to reach adequate height to be thoroughly soaked before they started any sort of urban fire.

But I'm a bastard who believes in following the state law and local ordinances, which are not at all enforced on evenings like this.  So I'm sure we'll have plenty of luck getting all the other crap enforced, as well.