I am driving from Alabama to Raleigh, North Carolina to see my grandmother.
As soon as you cross into Tennessee every other billboard is for fireworks or adult novelty stores.
I get the fireworks but what is with the smut shops?
I swear, forget The Volunteer State, the Tennessee state line sign should say:
“Welcome to Tennessee, for all your recreational explosives and dildo needs.”
Are sex toys and fireworks legal or illegal in Alabama?
My guess is they are illegal and Tennessee is just filling a market niche. Every year before the Fourth of July, the Twin Cities media is filled with advertisements for Wisconsin Fireworks stores. Minnesota legal sparklers and fountains just don’t cut it.
Alabama Code Title 13A. Criminal Code § 13A-12-200.2 is a bizarre law which (amongst other things) prohibits the distribution of “any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs for any thing of pecuniary value.”
First-time offenders face a $10,000 fine and a year in prison, while repeat offenders can face up to ten years!
Because for all the noise Alabama conservatives might make about personal freedom and individual liberties, they only extend those freedoms so far. We can’t allow people to do things that Jesus might find icky!
If you’re truly kinky and adventurous you combine the two for a doubly explosive night!
Darwin Approved.
Idaho bans all fireworks except for the “safe and sane” (i.e. boring) variety, mostly to try keep idiots from burning the state down. Wyoming, on the other hand is pretty much anything goes. Every business near the border advertises fireworks. My neighborhood puts on an impressive impromptu (an illegal) display every Fourth of July. So the ban (as most bans do) fails to meet is objective.
MA and NH, same story as far as fireworks is concerned.
It seems the answer is simple: if you ban it, your neighbors will advertise it. Especially if it’s a personal preference matter where a lot of people say “what’s wrong with you for wanting to ban this?”