I love a good Fourth of July show as much as the next guy. The whistle, the color, the way kids’ faces light up at the park in Sistersville. There’s something about fireworks at a festival that feels like summer itself.

But there’s a difference between a controlled show over the Ohio River and a box of bottle rockets going off at midnight on a back street in Paden City.

That’s why West Virginia should ban personal fireworks and keep them only for licensed, controlled environments; fairs, festivals, ballparks. Not backyards. Not parking lots. Not 11 p.m. on a Tuesday.

The American Pyrotechnics Association reports fireworks send over 9,700 people to U.S. emergency rooms every year. That’s an average of 26 ER visits every single day, and the numbers spike 10x around July 4th. More than 1,300 of those injuries are eye injuries. Over 400 are hand injuries that lead to amputations. Kids under 15 make up about 1/3 of all injuries. Most accidents happen with “legal” consumer fireworks, sparklers burn at 2,000 degrees, hot enough to melt gold.

In WV, our volunteer fire departments already run thin. When someone’s hand gets blown off lighting an M-80, that’s a squad, an ambulance, and an ER team pulled away from someone having a heart attack. The risk isn’t just to the person lighting it.

The animal cost is even worse. We don’t count it in headlines, but we should. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals reports animal ER visits jump 30-60% during fireworks holidays. Dogs’ hearing is 3x more sensitive than ours. What’s a loud “boom” to us is physical pain to them.

There is a 30% increase in lost dogs from July 4-6. More pets die from traffic after bolting in fear than from any other cause that week. Livestock panic too, cattle stampede fences, and horses break legs. In Pennsylvania after a 2017 show, a farmer lost 14 head of cattle when they ran through barbed wire.

For many of our veterans, fireworks don’t look like celebrations. They sound like war. The VA estimates 11-20% of veterans from Iraq/Afghanistan and 30% of Vietnam veterans live with PTSD. For them, sudden explosions trigger flashbacks, panic attacks, and severe anxiety.

A 2019 study in Psychological Trauma found 49% of combat veterans with PTSD reported “significant distress” from fireworks, with symptoms lasting days after. The Wounded Warrior Project surveys show fireworks are the #2 trigger for PTSD episodes, right behind car backfires. In 2022, a veteran in Ohio died by suicide during a Fourth of July weekend,his family said the all-night fireworks made his PTSD unmanageable. He’s not alone. Crisis Text Line reports a 28% increase in texts from veterans July 3-5 compared to any other weekend.

We ask these men and women to serve, then we set off the very sounds that send them back to the worst day of their lives. That’s not freedom. That’s careless.

There’s a better way. Nobody’s saying “cancel the Fourth.” We’re saying “keep the boom where it belongs.” At the fairgrounds, with trained crews, safety perimeters, and cleanup. Everyone sees it, nobody loses a finger, nobody’s dog bolts into traffic, and no veteran spends the night shaking in his basement.

Fairs and festivals already do this right. Fire marshals inspect. Fire crews stand by, and fallout lands on asphalt, not dry grass. Kids watch from blankets instead of from a driveway with roman candles.

WV is a beautiful state full of woods, farms, and pets. We don’t need 1,000 backyard shows to feel patriotic. We need one good show we can all watch safely.

So let’s make the rule simple. If it booms, it belongs at the fairgrounds.

Let’s keep our kids’ hands whole, our dogs at home, and our fire departments focused on real emergencies. The sky will still light up.

It’ll just be safer, kinder, and a lot less noisy for the rest of us.