Do You Know Florida Fireworks Laws?
Are you sure you know Florida’s Fireworks Laws? Around this time of year, those fireworks stands start popping up and sell cases of fireworks, so it must be legal. Right?
Your neighbors are shooting off explosives. Almost everyone is doing it, so it must be legal. Right?
Here’s What Florida Fireworks Laws Permit
When you walk into the fireworks store (or stand), you see crates and boxes with cool names like Barely Legal, Lock and Load, and Tropic Thunder. There are specialty kits for a Aerial Avalanche and a Finale Spectacle. Unfortunately for you, Florida Fireworks Laws only permit you to buy items classified as Sparklers. Remember those little sticks you light and sparks fly off, occasionally burning your wrist? As a kid, you’d run around and wave them in circles. That’s still all you’re really allowed to have. You can buy fountains, snakes and glow worms – they’re classified as sparklers. To be fair, you can buy anything they sell. The problems come around when you try to use the fireworks.
Lighting anything larger than a sparkler for the purpose of putting on a show without a permit is a misdemeanor in Florida. You may face up to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.
The fireworks store may ask you to sign a waiver if you buy anything above a sparkler. That waiver isn’t for your benefit and doesn’t give you a permit to use the fireworks. If you take the time to read it, you’ll see it exists only to protect the fireworks vendor by declaring that you only intend to use the fireworks for a legal reason. If you go ahead and use them for an illegal reason, you’re on your own.