The animal welfare charity, the RSPCA, wants lawmakers to ban ‘non-official’ firework displays and outlaw sales of fireworks which make very loud bangs, due to the distress this causes to dogs, cats and other animals, including livestock.
Now, it would be dead easy for we libertarians to immediately characterise this sort of thing as the obsession of a bunch of control freaks who want to remove our fun. I can certainly see that point. As a kid, I loved the annual Bonfire Night firework display of November 5, when my dad invariably built an enormous fire at our farm and let off vast numbers of fireworks.
But libertarians are also conscious of the issue of property rights. If I am a dog owner, and I do not want my canine companion to be traumatised by loud bangs coming from my neighbour’s property, can and should I be able to find a way to get the noise stopped? Do repeated loud noises constitute an invasion of my property rights? Or should I be able to make some kind of agreement, perhaps even involving money? For example, the firework lovers could offer a neighbour a cash sum, or offer to take the neighbour’s pets to a kennel home (soundproofed!) for the evening?
Sound ‘pollution’ can be hard to enforce via property rights, but that does not mean it would be impossible to do so. So at the risk of attracting the ire of firework nuts, I sympathise with this particular RSPCA cause, but obviously vastly prefer solutions which mean that enthusiasts of firework displays, both amateur and official, can enjoy a party while their neighbours’ pets are not sent into agonies.
By that logic almost anything anyone does should be subject to political control. What about the common law right to keep doing what I have done in the past? That is how right-of-way is established, so why not the right to fire off my fireworks, something which people have done for centuries in Britain?
The RSPCA are not interested in animal rights. They haven’t been for a very long time. They are a political lobbying group, nothing more – and this is another attempt by them to dictate government policy in the guise of it being “for the children”, er, animals.
I have to agree with both Perry de Havilland and TPO – there is a long tradition being threatened here and there are plenty of reasons to believe that the RSPCA’s game is really a political one (in the broadest Gramscian sense).
As for the real distress caused to animals, it’s hard to assess with any degree of accuracy. Certainly, cats and dogs don’tlike the sound of explosions, but they don’t enjoy a lot of what happens around them – domestic arguments, for example. Should they, too, be subject to legal control?
Being badgered (!) by charities causes me real and genuine distress, too, so can we have those outlawed while we’re at it?
No, I thought not.
Regardless of what you think of the RSPCA and its campaign, what of my point about extreme noise and property rights? Are you guys saying you want to make as much racket as you like, and sod the neighbours?
I was trying to prize open some discussion about how property owners get along over stuff like this. Just slagging off the RSPCA does not really get us very far, even if you suspect their agenda, as I do. The same sort of arguments apply to folk with very young children, for instance.
There’s probably something like a “tort of nuisance” or some such, for people to sue if the fireworks were unreasonable in context. The fact that it was Guy Fawkes day would count against the complainer – they should have known it was coming, and they ought to have kept their pets indoors.
It’s not only dogs that are distressed by loud noises. I am also distressed. Maybe fireworks are rare and of short duration, but sometimes neigbours will play some noisy music at very high volume, for hours. That’s a very bad problem, and I don’t see any non-political solution to it. You can’t sue your neighbour every time it happens, it’s not practical. Maybe shooting them would solve the problem.
Perry,
“That is how right-of-way is established, so why not the right to fire off my fireworks, something which people have done for centuries in Britain?”
Circumstances change, maybe population density now is far worse than in the past ?
Hell, Bella (our black lab) loves loud noises. A dog that’s frightened by fireworks is a dog that has not been prepared for modern life by its keeper. That’s what the RSPCA should be campaigning about…
Johnathan writes:
“I was trying to prize open some discussion about how property owners get along over stuff like this.”
By good old fashioned common sense and compromise. Most definitely not by having yet more bloody laws passed by the Westminster Control Factory.
I’m sure the existing laws concerning public nuisance are already more than adequate given wise application.
Technically sound doesn’t cross your property boundary, it propagates into air that was already inside. It could be said that “if you allow your property to be sound-permeable, it’s your problem”. That does run into complications though. For example, all explosion blast-fronts are, is a rather loud sound.
This seems to be one of those cases where a pure propertarian approach stumbles, and you have to invoke “common sense”.
So what? If you buy property, you need to uderstand what environment exists around it. The same argument applied to anyone who buys a house under an existing flight path. If fireworks bother you for a few nights a year… get over it, they are part of the cultural landscape unless someone if actually doing it constantly just to annoy you. On the later issue, although aircraft may be more numerous than when they bought their houses, they are also far quieter than 20 years ago. Sure, it is not always a clear cut issue but fireworks are a well known thing than do not really change much and are of very limited duration.
OK… Tackling the issue of noise – as opposed to how despicable the RSPCA are – I’d love to see fireworks confined to November 5th or the weekends immediately around it. This does rather stuff up things for people who believe in fireworks for other occasions, however, so I don’t feel that is reasonable to expect.
If I am able to hold a firework display adequately safely in my own garden, without causing an unreasonable nuisance (my definition of what is unreasonable, naturally), then the government can quite frankly take a running jump. If I were to choose to let off fireworks at 0300 every night for a week, I would suggest that that would be unreasonable on my part, as I wouldn’t want it being done to me.
I also forge in my back garden. Not much, just enough to knock out some interestingly twisted bits of steel. I don’t do *that* at unsociable hours, either – out of consideration for others.
If you’re absolutely dead-set on doing anything about the “problem”, go and sort out the vermin who like to set them off in parks & the like in the small hours. But of course, that is far too much trouble to police – a householder has by definition a fixed abode, so is easy to find and prosecute.
Ronald Coase’s paper entitled, I think, On the Problem of Social Cost, dealt with this sort issue.
Chapters 2 and 3 of this book (Link) discusses it in some detail.
I’m with Stark on the property right issue, as long as fireworks do not cause direct harm to your property (house or dog) and do not constitute a major new source of nuisance you need to get over it. They simply constitute a part of the environment.
As to the RSPCA the problem with them is that they are precisely for animal rights, not what used to be known as animal welfare. They now a days promote an agenda that maintains the needs and feelings of animals should be accorded the same level of respect as those of humans. The logical long term aim of that being to ban the consumption of animals. A tough call for a species of omnivores.
I think one has to differentiate between the occasional loud noise and 1/2 hour of fireworks, which while potentially mildy unpleasant to man an beast, probably aren’t more than a minor and occaisional nuisance; and say, massive continual noises and sometimes dust from a highway, a large airport, a mining operation, bars that release masses of drunken revelers every night and the like.
I agree with the ThePresentOccupier. The problem isn’t on Guy Fawkes or on weekends either side when there are professional shows and folks in their back gardens letting them off. The problem isn’t even Divali. And the problem isn’t even during the summer when outdoor concerts and shows let them off for the grand finale. The problem is the gangs of kids who let them off every night at all hours from the time they go on sale in mid-October until the shops have sold out in mid-November. They are a bloody nuisance to man and beast and I’m sure there are already existing measures that can be used to put a stop to them. Catching them might be difficult though.
You shouldn’t have pets anyway. Dogs bark, the noise of which carries onto my property, and the smell of them sends nose pollution onto my land. Nose pollution is even worse if you let them dump outside.
Your pets also kill or scare off the animals which normally occupy my land. Shouldn’t it be a requirement that, in order to own a pet, you have to pay me for the birds they scare off?
It sounds to me like somebody just doesn’t like fireworks. You wouldn’t enjoy this weekend in America. We’re going to let off a rather large lot. The 4th of July means fireworks aplenty in the States. An added side effect is that it will make the noise of the rifle shooting we are going to do less noticable. 30-06 rounds are a lot louder than firecrackers.
Guns and explosives. Man I love the 4th.
Just don’t get me started on anvil blasting… A horrible crime against tools!
Lawn mowers. Especially when used at 8am on a Sunday morning. Ban ’em I say, an afront to natural meadow lands.
Ought to get a bill on that through parliament too 😉
Of course, scythes would need to be licensed if you did that – can’t have peasant rabbles going around with potentially lethal weapons.
It would seem a valid request if such displays were a frequent occurrence. What kind of evidence do we have that cats and dogs are traumatized by one or twice a year firework displays ? How about thunderstorms ? How do you forbid those ?
Sylvain Galineau writes: “How about thunderstorms ? How do you forbid those ?”
Hush! Don’t give them ideas….
What makes these statist think ‘official’ fireworks are any less frightening for pets?
The blue touch paper was lit by a black, lesbian refugee on behalf of the Loony Borough of Camden’s PC Guy Fawkes remembrance ceremony.
And apart from harrassing me in the street don’t charities like the RSPCA, NCH and NSPCC have anything else to do but commission (biased) research on their own behalf then bleat their political message via the BBC.
I wouldn’t give them a penny.
While there are many varied and sundry libertarian points to be made about the usage of fireworks, that blowing up stuff with a properly placed M-80 or M-100 is really fun. There is really nothing that can beat the fun of turning a SoundDesign 8-track tape player into little bits of flying electronic components, or the sheer bliss of watching a recipe box fly 100 feet into the air.
The reminds me–I better start getting ready, the Fourth is only 3 days away…..
Most fireworks are illlegal in the States in urban areas. That doesn’t prevent people from firing them off – that is one rule which isn’t overwhelmingly enforced. The reason isn’t the noise, though, it is the fire hazard – your fireworks can set fire to my roof. (For the same reason, fireworks have been banned over large rural areas of Texas the last couple of years – there have been some rather large brushfires set by cigarettes, leave alone intentional explosives loosed on the environment. This year, it has been, uh, rather wet (14 inches of rain in Austin in June), so rural restrictions are not in force.
I suspect from the text that English fireworks restriction is historically much less draconian than those stateside. I would prefer slightly different language in the US (legal on/over own property, but illegal to fire over public or other’s property. Since most dangerous fireworks cannot be controlled, they would be functionally illegal.) but the restriction itself doesn’t bother me.
Around Heresville, USA, there is a traditional degree of license concerning the letting-off of fireworks during the week which surrounds July 4th – This week! There’s also a greater degree of tolerance regarding the quailty of fireworks – how high they go or how much of a ‘bang’ they make.
For the rest of the year, any really ostentatious use of fireworks will attract enforcement attention. However, Michigan is much more restrictive of fireworks than many other states, especially Southern states. And there’s plenty of – ahem – importation going on.
All this varies, of course, by how rural or urban the area is. Out in the country, folks celebrate the 4th with dynamite, and nobody says anything about that.
llater,
llamas
We don’t need a solution for a non-problem. Britons fire off fireworks once a year on average.
Keep the scaredy-cats indoors on Guy Fawkes day. Anyway Libertarians should do all they can to honour Guy Fawkes – the only honest man to enter parliament!
Fireworks are highly restricted in the Northeast US, too. I don’t think you’re permitted much more than sparklers. Hurrah for capitalism, though — at the point along the highway they become legal (forget where – North Carolina, maybe?), firework sales are the local industry. People from New England drive home laden with enough explosives to…well, it doesn’t bear thinking of. There’s one particular gigantic fireworks supermarket called South of the Border that billboards advertise for hundreds of miles around.
Heard on the radio this morning that 17,000 tons of fireworks were confiscated in Massachusetts last year. They were complaining that injuries were up. Notice they didn’t say how many injuries there were, just that the numbers were higher this year.
Frankly, if 80 million people have the time of their lives on Sunday letting the things off, and fifty of Darwin’s godsons lose a finger each…I consider that pretty decent math.
I went a few rounds with this issue last year with someone who was in favor of noise ordinance laws. At the time, I wasn’t nearly as anarcho as a I am now, so of course I don’t want the state getting involved at all…but there is some discussion to consider. The initial topic was about ground-pounding subwoofers and loud music in neighborhoods.
I lived in Florida for five years. State law there forbid private fireworks unless they were being used by farmers to frighten away pests like crows.
So, every June and December fireworks stands would pop up around the area and all of us farmers would stock up on fireworks to chase off those dang crows.
The best days for spooking crows, by the way, seem to be July 4 and Dec. 31.
Julian Morrison wrote:
Indeed, and there are laws against unreasonable noise, or acting in a manner likely to cause damage to life, limb or property. However, it’s far easier for The Powers That Be to pass new laws rather than enforce old ones.
I live in Leeds, and from mid-October to mid-November, what with Guy Fawkes’ night and Diwali, it’s like an An Najaf cease-fire from mid-morning to well past midnight. Until recently, we also had inpromptu displays throughout the year, at all hours, in all weather, until the Police found out this was the local dealers’ way of letting the clientele know they had some new stock in.
The sad fact is that around here the small family bonfire night of blessed memory has been almost completely eclipsed by yahoos demanding, and getting, bigger bangs for their buck, and to hell with anyone else. Public displays have to do more and more to compete, and liability insurance is such that it’s almost not worth doing public displays unless you’re a council or someone who can afford it. I have some friends who are artists in this field: they produce stuff that WETA never even dreamed of in the Lord of the Rings, and they do it for real, but not for much longer.
And I’m not even sure if it’s a minority who are going to ruin it for the rest of us.
What a load of old cobblers.
Let’s start off with a few basic propositions:
1. People are more important than animals. (I know some animal-lovers are going to dispute this, but screw them, too. Dogs don’t discover cures for disease, and no cat has ever defended liberty against Nazis.)
2. If people want to celebrate an event of historical significance, they should do so. If it upsets animals, I believe the legal term is “Tough shit.”
3. Some perspective is required here: IT’S ONE SODDING NIGHT OF THE YEAR. Yeah, the animals will be terrified of loud noises, for all of 8 hours. Boo hoo. (I wonder why gun dogs aren’t afraid of loud noises…? But I digress.)
4. It’s just another gambit by Nannies International to tell us that They Know What’s Good For Us, better than we do.
A pox on all of them. And the sleekit cowering timorous beasties, for that matter.
I think the burden here lies on animal owners, who ought to have contingency plans for fireworks evenings. The RSPCA do have a good point, but as usual, their advocacy of government intervention is quite misguided.
On a personal note, a German Shepherd of about eight whom I knew died this New Years’ Eve, when an evening of fireworks drove him to seek shelter in a wedge-like crevace mistakenly built into the new homes being built in his backyard (separate buildings that ought to have been symmetrically aligned instead have a narrow triangular space between them). After two or three days of attempts to pull him out, he starved to death.
While I was angry with those who set off the fireworks, the owner should have tied the dog that evening.
Kim du Toit:
1. People may be more important than animals, but animals are very important to people (for all sorts of reasons).
2. Of course people have the right to celebrate events of historical significance, but they don’t have the right to do so in a manner that causes unavoidable disturbance/damage others who don’t or can’t, whether it results in traumatised pets or wildlife or vibrating buildings. You’d be the first one to complain if something disturbed you.
3. You seem to have no perspective at all. Fireworks displays can take place on any night. Or did history only happen on one day each year? Would you have the same callous attitude that you seem to have towards animals if instead it was a baby or very young child who was being terrified? In case it hadn’t occurred to you, gun dogs are probably not afraid of loud guns because they become accustomed to them when being trained. Pets and wild animals don’t have gun training – they don’t need to, so any aberrant disturbance will cause alarm and distress.
Generally:
There is no reason why fireworks should not make bangs when they explode – however, there is also no reason why those bangs should be artificially loud.
Everyone has a duty to avoid causing unneccesary disturbance (of whatever degree). However, if the free market or individuals as a whole won’t do anything about it, the state eventually will.
I own a dog that doesn’t like thunder-storms and fireworks (or gun-shots). I do not expect people not to have fireworks in their own yard, hunt a proper (ie legal) distance from my house or mother nature not to have loud lightning. (Although we could do less with the two lighting strikes we have had on or near the house in Maine.) The fourth just means I or one of my parents has to have more “quality time” with Vera. I sometimes suspect that some her fear is a way of getting attention… but I digress.
I agree that the RSPCA is using the dog cover for aiding and abetting the nanny types who want to ban fireworks from private hands.
If you have a dog that does not like fireworks then you have to spend some more time with it while they are going on. This is one of the prices of having a dog.
John D, you are talking nonsense. Some dogs don’t mind loud noises while others do: simple fact. It has nothing to do with upbringing in my experience. We have had 5 dogs of the same breed and two hated lightning/loud bangs, the other three couldn’t give a toss. Although, my current dog Vera was obtained when she was 12 months old. so I suspect that might have something to do with it. There are also varying degrees of “bother”: are these people just talking about a dog shaking uncontrollably (in extreme cases pissing themselves) or they talking about shepherd types of dogs who are concerned by loud noises.
Of course, saying that, I have met quite a few people who get very nervous during thunder-storms (extreme weather), around any kind of shooting and even around fire-works.
My family has a dog who is frightened of strange men. Should they be banned?
At precisely four o’clock this morning, we were hit with a hellacious thunderstorm and I found myself with a bedful of bristling cat. “Damn Samizdata, ” I thought, and went back to sleep.
Re:- pets and fireworks . . .
(Link)
I remember being surprised when I lived in the Bay Area that they actually ran things on the local evening news about where you could buy fireworks in preparation for 4th July. I recal being annoyed because that was the lead story over a minor thing like Milosovich being araigned in the Hague…
We went to the park on Christmas day with my ever so slightly nutty Brother-in-Law who had bought something akin to ordinance, which we let off at about 9pm.
I was not a safe nor sane thing to do, but oh my, it was fun. All the people facing the park seemed to approve too and cheered.
I think its a consideration thing, legislation simply isn’t the answer.