When I submitted my column last week on fireworks, I held my nose while pressing the send button. I’m normally a self-loathing type anyway, but that column smelled a lot like a “Last-Minute Deadline Special”. Well, I ended up getting more mail on that column than anything else I’d written so far.

There were two points I would have liked to expand on, but there wasn’t enough space here for me to completely write out my opinions. I left out the personal side of the fireworks debate, while just barely touching on a bigger concept that was even more important.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was reading this who might have been permanently scarred by fireworks, had their house burn down, or something equally tragic. I’m not insensitive to human suffering; those stories always get me, especially when kids are involved.

But it’s still not enough for me to change my mind. It would be safer to just agree, and say that we should ban things if they harm people, but I think it’s bad policy to ask victims to determine the consequences. It’s better to leave legislating to people who aren’t personally and emotionally invested in the situation. I’m not exempt from this; if you ran over my dog with your car, I probably wouldn’t be happy with less than five years in jail for you.

And that brings me to the more important problem; our tendency to overreact and create new laws whenever a problem makes the headlines.

Generally, hysterical people tend to get the most attention. Most of you remember the summer’s top story of 2001, when a shark bit off the arm of an 8-year-old boy, and the news media ran wild with the notion of a shark attack epidemic. In reality, there were fewer shark attacks that year, and they declined again over the next few years.

In my neighborhood, there was a brief movement a few years ago to ban pit bulls within just the boundaries of the homeowner’s association. The movement was started by a homeowner who’d had a bad experience years before, and their next door neighbor was raising pit bull puppies. The pit bull ban had legs for a few days until rational thought returned, and everyone realized how absurd it would be for volunteer homeowners to suddenly become dog breed experts and enforce a rule like that.

You can be sure that the next movement to ban pit bulls in one of our cities will be after a really bad attack on a child. It won’t matter whether it’s a good law or not, and it won’t matter even if it’s the only pit bull attack in the country that year. Just like the shark incident, it only takes one personal story to generate hysteria.

I’m not advocating that we just shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, life is dangerous, and there’s nothing we can do”. We do need to limit the extremes for general public safety reasons.

For example, in the case of fireworks, no one wants idiot teenagers running around with sticks of dynamite. I can remember once drooling at the prospect of a firework that supposedly was as powerful as just a quarter-stick of dynamite. At 15, you’re not going to say, “Gee fellas, this is probably too powerful for us. Let’s not blow this up.”

But that’s not at issue in this situation. There should be penalties for people who are truly stupid with fireworks, but should shooting them off on July 2 at 4 p.m. really be a crime? Is that the best use of our limited police resources, city staff time, and City Council meetings?

It’s not a deterrent in my neighborhood, and the fireworks usually start up in mid-June. Lots of people are openly ignoring the law, and I personally believe that having too many strict behavior regulations breeds contempt for all nuisance laws, and contempt for the police officers who have to enforce them.

There’s no legislative utopia just around the corner, and we’ll never be able to control everyone’s behavior through thousands of ordinances. But each of us can create an atmosphere of doing the right thing.

When I’m finally crowned Supreme Leader of Maple Valley, I’ll have banners made that say, “Happy 4th! Please wait until the 1st to blow stuff up. And don’t be stupid. Love, King Ryan”.

Ryan Ryals lives in Maple Valley and writes a weekly column about politics and life in the city.