I went and bought fireworks this year. I had to search quite a while to find a spot to shoot them off. Last year some guy charged people to come onto his land and shoot them off. He had a gravel parking lot we circled around and there were "monitors" that walked amongst the crowd. Unfortunately his property was annexed by a larger city this year and he couldn't offer the service.
While driving around, I realized fireworks are a perfect example, and ironic considering "Independence Day", of the shift of freedoms. This country was founded on the idea that rights were in possession of the individual because it is human nature, hence "endowed by our Creator".
Slowly, the rights inherit is us as human beings began to be granted to us by the government. For example the right to keep your earnings derives directly from "right to life". If you can not keep the rewards from your labor, then part of your life is spent in servitude. Since taxes are so oppressive to many, it really has become, "How much is Uncle Sam going to let me keep this year?"
Setting off fireworks, especially on 4th of July, used to be a freedom previous generations freely expressed. However, like most freedoms, the government seems to have taken complete control, and measuredly hands out freedoms to us, through regulation, licensing, and straight illegality. In Texas, it was illegal to possess any firework on a stick. That is new, and we will probable never see them again. Once a government takes away a right, it never grants it back.