In Defense of Blowing Your Fingers Off on the Fourth of July

Fireworks are awesome. This is objectively true, the clearest evidence being that Sonny Bunch hates them. Other convincing evidence is that every year as the Fourth of July approaches, fire departments and law enforcement put out videos showing the grisly effects of fireworks on dummies and watermelons in an attempt to dissuade people from buying fireworks. Those videos instead remind people about how freaking cool fireworks are.

Every year, some hoity-toity East Coast liberal journalist (other than Sonny, I mean) has to inform us that actually fireworks are bad. "Fireworks are America’s favorite face exploding, dog torturing, bird murdering way to celebrate its birthday," complained one Washington Post writer Monday, relitigating all the familiar complaints about fireworks; they annoy dogs, kill birds, and yes, leave thousands of people with injuries (or "freedom stubs," as I call them).

The animal thing is barely worth a reply. Dogs freak out at thunder, they freak out when a squirrel walks by, they freak out at vacuums. If you own a dog, you've resigned yourself to dealing with a long series of unwarranted freakouts. As for birds, c'mon, we're talking about animals that usually die by yeeting themselves into windows. To die a death as sicknasty as being blown to smithereens mid-air is frankly an honor.

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