‘Bonfires and Illuminations’

The Declaration of Independence, signed 232 years ago tomorrow, shines brightly to this day as a beacon of liberty in a world still too oppressed. So why, we ask in our annual Fourth of July editorial, are New Yorkers forced to celebrate in the dark? The Founding Fathers believed that the Fourth of July should be celebrated with “bonfires and illuminations from one end of the continent to the other, from this day forward ever more.” Yet at this end of the continent, we New Yorkers live in one of only five states that completely outlaw personal use of fireworks. The state has had a ban on the books in one form or another since 1965.Although safety is often cited as a justification for such laws, personal responsibility seems to have more bearing on safety than the fireworks themselves. According to the American Pyrotechnics Association, a trade group, consumption of fireworks, measured in millions of pounds, increased 920% between 1976 and 2007. During the same period, injuries, measured in injuries per 100,000 pounds of fireworks sold, fell 90%. In 1976, there were 38.3 injuries per 100,000 pounds of fireworks sold; last year, there were 3.7. In 2007, the Consumer Products Safety Commission counted 9,800 injuries caused by fireworks; the Commission counted slightly more injuries involving “books, magazines, albums, or scrapbooks.”New York’s ban seems even more insulting when one considers the completely unnecessary burden it puts on law enforcement. The city’s enforcement efforts on fireworks read like something more worthy of a counterterrorism program. The police department has worked with surrounding jurisdictions to track down traffickers and used checkpoints at the bridges and tunnels to search vehicles for fireworks as they enter the city.Over the first six months of 2006, the New York Police Department seized 1,353 cases of fireworks, 46 vehicles, and made 181 arrests in the course of its fireworks investigations. While keeping up the same level of pressure in 2007, seizures of cars and cases declined by half compared to the same period in 2006, and arrests dropped slightly to 124. This year, the police have made only 64 arrests for fireworks possession, and seized only 6 vehicles and 218 cases. An NYPD spokesman, Paul Brown, attributed the declining numbers to decreased criminal activity. Enforcement levels have not changed.In other words, the NYPD’s effort to curtail fireworks use has been a resounding success. But instead of reducing a legitimate social nuisance, the achievement has dissuaded New Yorkers from celebrating their Independence in the manner established by the men and women who first won it for them.What kind of message is that sending to the youngsters of this city? George Washington would have been disgusted. We don’t blame the police commissioner or the police; they don’t write these laws. They are sworn to enforce them. The legislature owes them other priorities. On this Independence Day holiday, Americans are indeed in danger. But the danger comes from those terrorists who seek to destroy our liberties, not from the means ordinary New Yorkers would like to use to celebrate the country’s founding, the very way for which the Founders themselves called. The signers of the Declaration of Independence took a great risk in affixing their names to that parchment. There’s absolutely no reason for Albany to spoil our national holiday by preventing New Yorkers from taking their own risks to celebrate that achievement.

‘Bonfires and Illuminations’

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