TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — You can only launch fireworks three days a year in the state of Florida. The latest is just under two weeks away. By state law, you can only legally shoot fireworks on Fourth of July, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the most recent fireworks rules into law in 2020.
The law signed two years ago also set definitions of what counts as a firework.
The Florida statutes define a firework as “any combustible or explosive composition or substance or combination of substances or, except as hereinafter provided, any article prepared for the purpose of producing a visible or audible effect by combustion, explosion, deflagration, or detonation.”
Simply put, anything that uses explosives and launches into the sky using fire, using flammable compounds, tablets, or any explosive substances is a firework. This also includes blank cartridges and toy cannons where explosives are used, and the types of balloons which need fire to propel them.
Specific fireworks that meet these definitions, as defined by law, include:
- Firecrackers
- Torpedoes
- Skyrockets
- Roman candles
- Dago Bombs
If you’re looking for more bang for your buck without getting into fireworks territory, sparklers, toy pistols, toy guns, toy canes, and paper caps with “25 hundredths grains or less of explosive compounds are used” to pop off are legal, and don’t count as a firework, as long as a hand can’t come into contact with the cap when it goes boom.
Toy pistol paper caps containing 20 hundredths of grains of explosive mixture are also fine all year long. Pop-its, snaps, and tiny boxes of TNT, snake or glow worms, smoke devices, trick noisemakers, party poppers, booby traps, trick matches, a cigarette load, and auto burglar alarms are legal to buy year round.
