KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Firework season is here, and people are heading to tents across the metro.
It’s Christmas in June for vendors.
“A lot of the fun part of this business is the face-to-face interaction and getting to know people,” said Christian Jones, owner of Pat Riots in Kansas City, Kansas.
But many towns and cities all have different laws as to what you can shoot off.
For example, in Overland Park, no fireworks are allowed to be sold or bought.
“People are buying fireworks and we know that, and they are going to go to other cities and purchase fireworks and they will bring them over here to Overland Park,” said Overland Park Public Information Officer John Lacy. “It's a big problem. We see it in Overland Park. We tell people they are not legal, you know, from firecrackers to bottle rockets, things of that sort. People still go to KCMO and purchase them or KCK and bring them over to Overland Park thinking that it's legal.”
There will be special crews out looking for offenders.
“We do have officers on the street. They're going to be patrolling from the middle of the day all the way past midnight and what they are looking for is people setting off fireworks,” said Lacy.
For online sales, you must follow whatever laws are currently in place in your city — in Overland Park, that’s illegal.
“It's on the buyer, it's not on the seller. It’s on the buyer — you know that it's illegal in Overland Park,” said Lacy.
These rules are something Jones makes sure his customers are aware of.
“We do pass out rules with every sale of what you can and can't do, but there are certainly special areas of the city where it's totally fine to blow up anything that we are selling here and there's parts of the city you're not supposed to,” said Jones.
Missouri’s laws are a bit more relaxed than Kansas. Bottle rockets, for example, are outlawed in Kansas but you can shoot them off in Missouri if your city allows them.
To find out if your city allows fireworks and the laws, click here.
