He wanted to go out with a bang!

Governor Dayton vetoes Rep. Kriesel's fireworks bill

San Francisco Chronicle

And we're lucky he did, too. Because the last thing you need is the neighborhood idiot firing an aerial bomb through you bedroom window.

The veto angered Kriesel because:

By all accounts, Kriesel won't give it up on Twitter, either. Since he wants to be a truculent juvenile about it, let's discuss it. Rep. Kriesel frames the freedom to shoot off big fireworks, naturally, as a Republican, as a personal freedom issue.

But there are a lot of laws we need because "there are a few idiots who can't be responsible." In the public safety area, maybe most of them.

Yes, most people would discharge their firearms in the city responsibly; it's just a few idiots who ruin it for the rest of us 9 mil owners who just want to plink a few cans now and again.

And indeed, there are people who can drive safely at 50 mph down residential streets. Why should a few idiots who can't limit their freedom?

It's just so unfair.

Returning now to the world of responsible adulthood, Mark Dayton said this in his veto letter:

In his letter on the fireworks bill, Dayton noted that after Minnesota legalized ground-based fireworks such as sparklers and small cones in 2002, injuries have spiked, particularly among young people. Property damage statistics, he said, "showed a similar trend." 

"Expanding the array of legally-available fireworks products, particularly to explosive and aerial varieties, can only be expected to exacerbate these statistics," he said.

In other words, the "few idiots" hurt themselves and others and burn stuff down.

One of the other reasons advanced for the bill is that you can buy the big stuff in Wisconsin. When I used this kind of reasoning with my mother, she always used to say, "I suppose if everybody else jumped off the bridge, you would, too."

By the way, Wisconsin also has a higher and indexed gasoline tax, so we don't exactly follow Wisconsin's lead wherever it goes.

So just let it go, Rep. Kriesel; you'll still get to blow shit up on Guard weekends.

If any of you out there still thinks that Governor Dayton should have signed the bill, raise your three-fingered hand.

Update: Javier Morillo-Alecia reacted strongly to an earlier version of the post because he thought I was referring to Rep. Kriesel's lost legs. I wasn't (it didn't even occur to me), but I was thinking about missing fingers, hands, and eyes from fireworks.

I apologize to anybody who thought the reference was to Rep. Kriesel's lost legs, and I apologize for the thoughtless reference.

But I do not shrink for a moment from the point that Mark Dayton saved unnumbered persons from disabling injury from fireworks that would have been caused by Rep. Kriesel's bill.