Firecrackers Should Be Banned

It is funny how people always find a negative-positive development, disallowing populace to celebrate holidays without firecrackers.[G1]

Every year, the number of accidents caused by the firecrackers goes upwards. Annually, both young and old lose fingers, limbs, and lives because of firecrackers. Yearly then, needless injuries are inflicted all because, as many would say when interviewed over television news, “That is how it has always been.”[G2] [G3]

That’s why the government and the people in Davao City decided that they have had enough. Thus, during Christmas season of 2001 onwards, Mayor Rodrigo Duterte raised an ordinance to banned all the firecrackers in their city and celebrate holidays in safe ways. This ordinance promotes intelligent decision to the mind of Filipino of having a safe celebration of their family.

The reply was simple: no exemptions. It is in allowing exemptions when people will start ignoring the law. Having been told that and seeing that the government is looking out for the benefit of the majority and most especially the children, the citizens obeyed. From then on, the City of Davao has no record of injuries caused by the firecrackers. Not a single one, while the whole country still marks every Christmas and New Year countdown with a count-up of how many have been injured. That is an example of a simple and commonsensical solution to a problem that has been allowed in past decades.

Now here’s the decades-old rallies that get dispersed every year. The simple solution of not dispersing them and letting them seems unacceptable to the protesters. Who would want a protest without the drama and state repression? It’s just not the right setting. [G4] [G5] But do we really have to have the drama and state oppression when we can actually gather as one, identify the problems, and as citizens of one country work out solutions? This brings us back to firecrackers and how people keep at it despite warnings. As the Tondo residents who celebrate New Year’s Eve with the loudest firecrackers would often be quoted as saying on television during New Year’s countdown, “Ito na ang nakagawian eh!”

What a pathetic life that is, to risk injuries and fires and other losses for a practice that never really benefited anyone except the firecracker manufacturers and the machismo of some.

Today, our children have been allowed some time off and government workers as well. Let us make use of this time to ponder on what we can do to ensure that our country grows more to benefit the greater masses. The solution is really simple and will not even require making effigies and carrying streamers. It is as simple as building a stronger community of caring people in our own neighborhood.

Works Cited:

1. American Battlefield Trust. (n.d.). Andrew Jackson. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/andrew-jackson
2. Brands, H. W. (2005). Andrew Jackson: His life and times. Knopf.
3. Congressional Globe, 23rd Cong., 1st Sess., (1833): 99–103.
4. Daniel Walker Howe. (2007). What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford History of the United States). Oxford University Press.
5. Hofstadter, R. (1948). The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made it. Random House.
6. Jackson, A. (1829). Message from the President of the United States. The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/message-the-president-the-united-states-1
7. Remini, R. V. (1981). Andrew Jackson and the course of American freedom, 1822-1832. HarperCollins Publishers.
8. Schlesinger, A. M. (1945). The Age of Jackson. Little, Brown and Company.
9. Wilentz, S. (2005). The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. W. W. Norton & Company.
10. Woodward, C. V. (1962). The Burden of Southern History. Louisiana State University Press.