Commentary
If we want to prevent the use of illegal fireworks, we have to give the city tools to lay down the law. That means more funding, arrests and timely court processing of cases.
By Danny de Gracia
January 6, 2025 · 7 min read
Danny de Gracia
Danny de Gracia is a resident of Waipahu, a political scientist and an ordained minister. Opinions are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Civil Beat’s views. You can reach him by email at dgracia@civilbeat.org or follow him on Twitter at @ddg2cb.
If we want to prevent the use of illegal fireworks, we have to give the city tools to lay down the law. That means more funding, arrests and timely court processing of cases.
I have a purely hypothetical question, just for the sake of policy discussion, that our elected leaders should ask each other: “If you were looking to buy illegal drugs in Hawaiʻi, where would you go to get them?”
Most of you would say, “Are you nuts? Why would I know how to get something like that?”
And my response to you is, “Exactly.”
Like Jennifer Grey opposite Charlie Sheen in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” if most of us clean-cut, law-abiding normies were to go looking for drugs, we wouldn’t know the first place to start. And rightly so. It would be a comedy of errors for us to even try. Why is that?
For one, the fact that drugs are illegal is well established, and if you get caught it’s major trouble. Second is a paranoia that a drug enforcement officer who looks like Josh Brolin is probably on stakeout, and if one goes seeking out a drug dealer, you’ll probably get stung in the process.
Now ask yourself this next question: “If you were looking to buy illegal aerial fireworks in Hawaiʻi, where would you go to get them?”
Suddenly almost everyone, including your next-door neighbor, knows exactly where to get the hookup.
But how is this possible? We know they’re illegal. We know shipments are being intercepted and confiscated by the government. And we might even know if you get caught, it’s a Class C felony according to House Revised Statute 132D-14. And yet, events like New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July find hundreds, maybe even thousands of local residents buying and launching illegal aerial fireworks without fear.
In international law, all law is based on traditions and tolerated patterns, so if no one honors or willingly submits to the law, it becomes invalid. This is why, ever since Jimmy Carter’s presidency, the United States will sail an aircraft carrier off the coast of any country that claims its territorial waters exceed 12 nautical miles, because we don’t want to create a precedent that allows countries to claim, for example, the Mediterranean is their private lake.
Domestic law operates on a similar principle. If no one obeys the law and if no one consistently enforces the law, it is of no effect. (Those of you who want to study this concept further can read about the philosopher Socrates and whether or not he had the right to selectively obey the laws of Athens.) In short, for a law to be effective, people must know it is reasonable and be willing to comply and those who do not obey the law must face some kind of consequence for noncompliance.
The public has been sailing an aircraft carrier’s worth of disobedience to the fireworks laws ever since they’ve been on the books. Superficially, that suggests that the public doesn’t think very highly of the law, or the legislators who passed them.
One could argue that the nonstop disobedience is like our version of “The Purge” movies, during which locals tolerate everything else in Hawaiʻi but insist on having a day to cast off restraint and vent frustration.
The aerial fireworks launched in Waipahu and Ewa Beach toward the end of the Covid-19 pandemic definitely felt malevolent against the government. But I personally think the real reason this isn’t working is the government just hasn’t made the case that aerial fireworks are dangerous and we have a unique situation, especially on Oʻahu, that requires us to prohibit these pyrotechnic devices.
Perhaps we need to go back to the beginning and run a series of fire safety messages. Firefighters are the most trusted people in America, so maybe the mayors should saturate social media, TV and radio with “Take This Seriously” ads from firefighters explaining why aerial fireworks are dangerous.
Hawaiʻi, and especially Oʻahu, has a population that is densely packed into multigenerational homes built close to one another. There is also a significant amount of dry brush. All it takes is for aerial fireworks to malfunction or their ballistic trajectory to be blown to the wrong place and you could have a dangerous fire.
There’s also the fact that most people think they know what they’re doing. Fireworks are actually very simple devices that are a lot easier to ignite or explode than one might realize.
A law that no one respects is no law at all.
Example: When I was 15, I was a member of my high school’s Estes model rocket launching club, and I considered myself an ace because I routinely built rockets that broke all the club’s records. But one day, my friend Josh lit up a cigarette and started smoking while I was preparing a set of C-rocket engines.
Before I could shout for him to stop, a single ember blew downwind to me and ignited the engines, flash-burning the outer layer of skin on the palm of my right hand. Improbable? Yes. But it happened. The lesson I learned that day was that rockets were more dangerous than I thought, and I never launched again.
If the public knew how dangerous aerial fireworks can be and heard from those who fight the fires started by them, those who treat the victims injured by them and possibly even the victims themselves, maybe they won’t have such an “I will not comply” knee-jerk reflex to the law.
Most people probably won’t or can’t turn in their neighbors who are in noncompliance with the aerial fireworks ban. I get it. We also don’t have enough officers to dedicate to fireworks enforcement while still watching for other crimes, so maybe we could start with a pilot project.
Honolulu could start with neighborhoods that are known to have a high frequency of illegal aerial launches and have city officials photograph incidents and the individuals launching them. In much the same way that some cities with water restrictions publish the names of people who waste water, those who violate HRS 132D-14 could be made public. Sure, this will definitely upset a lot of people, but it will quickly pop the bubble that you can use illegal fireworks with impunity in Honolulu.
And if we want more enforcement, we have to give the city the tools to lay down the law. That means more funding specifically allocated to education/countermarketing, patrols, arrests and timely court processing of cases. Not an easy thing to do, but if you’re serious about this stuff, you have to show the public that you’re treating the law as something to be enforced, not something to be idealized. Otherwise, a law that no one respects is no law at all.
We also should give citizens alternative activities on New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July. People want to have fun and we should recognize that. Alternative events could be a win for tourism as well.
At the end of the day, “fun” shouldn’t imperil your life and your neighbors.
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Danny de Gracia
Danny de Gracia is a resident of Waipahu, a political scientist and an ordained minister. Opinions are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Civil Beat’s views. You can reach him by email at dgracia@civilbeat.org or follow him on Twitter at @ddg2cb.
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