If you live in a big city or one of its surrounding suburbs, you’ve probably heard the fireworks — lots of them, at all times of night, creating a never-ending barrage of noise.
Fireworks are always prevalent this time of year, but there has been an uptick in sales and usage over the past couple of months. And there’s a simple explanation for this: People have been cooped up in their homes for the past three months, and they’re tired of being bored.
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The more elaborate explanation being floated by online conspiracy theorists over the past week or so is that state governments are handing out professional fireworks displays to random children in an effort to disrupt Black Lives Matter protests. This theory gained so much attention that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio actually launched a new illegal fireworks investigation unit.
But like most conspiracy theories, Fireworks-gate is little more than an attempt to explain away something that is actually quite simple. There are two elements to this story: free time and boredom.
“Everybody is having fun and celebrating,” Matt Shea, the vice president of Atlas Fireworks in New Hampshire, told Business Insider. “We were locked up for two months as a country, and the weather’s warm, people are all having fun. Many are still unemployed, and everybody is overly excited to celebrate summer with fireworks.”
Another factor to consider is the gradual relaxation of fireworks laws across the United States, including in New York City, where fireworks complaints are 236 times greater this month than they were last year. In other words, consumer fireworks are much easier to get ahold of nowadays, so more people are buying them. And since most cities have canceled their Fourth of July displays, people have decided to take matters into their own hands.
But when will it end? Probably not for a while, according to some retailers — at least, not until the pandemic ends.
