Are Backyard Fireworks Illegal in Massachusetts?

Backyard fireworks are not a Massachusetts tradition with a loophole. M.G.L. c. 148, sec. 39 makes it an offence to have fireworks in your possession or under your control, and to use or explode them, with a fine of not less than $10 nor more than $100. An officer seizes them without a warrant, and on conviction they are forfeited to the commonwealth.

Sparklers are named in the statute

The most common objection to this rule is that a sparkler is not really a firework. The section answers that itself. It writes its own definition, and sparklers appear in the list along with firecrackers, cherry bombs, silver salutes, M-80’s, torpedoes, sky-rockets, Roman candles, rockets, wheels, colored fires, fountains, mines and serpents. When a statute defines its own term, that definition is the one that governs the rest of the section.

Two different penalties, depending on what you did

Selling, keeping for sale or offering for sale carries the heavier figure: a fine of not less than one hundred dollars nor more than one thousand dollars, or imprisonment for not more than one year, or both. Possessing, controlling, using or exploding carries the smaller one: a fine of not less than ten dollars nor more than one hundred dollars. The video is about the second of those, which is the one that reaches a family on a lawn in July.

Seizure is written into the section

This is the part people are surprised by. The section says an officer qualified to serve criminal process shall seize all of the fireworks mentioned in it without a warrant, that notice of the seizure goes to the marshal, and that on conviction the fireworks are forfeited to the commonwealth. The fine is capped at a hundred dollars, but the shopping bag does not come home.

The exceptions are real, and they are in the text

Section 39 is not a flat ban with nothing on the other side. It carries its own list: sales for the use of someone holding a permit for a supervised display under section 39A, signal uses by railroads and boats, blank cartridges for a licensed show or for ceremonial purposes in athletics, experiments at an explosives factory, and toy caps below a stated grain limit, among others. A permitted town display and a driveway are not the same fact pattern under this section.

What this page is not

This page describes what section 39 says. It does not say how any particular department enforces it, whether a specific article falls inside the definition, or how a court would treat a given set of facts. Read the section yourself at the link above, and telephone the firm about a real situation.