VoluntaryAmerican
02-14-2013, 11:33 AM
Fireworks fans, rocket enthusiasts and government officials have made some headway in efforts to keep new homeland security regulations from putting a damper on legitimate launches — but some fiery traditions have fizzled out, at least for this Fourth of July.
The source of the controversy is the Safe Explosives Act, a measure that was signed into law last year and sparked a round of new rule-making by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The ATF’s authority over interstate sales of explosive materials was expanded to sales within states as well.
At the time, congressional backers portrayed the act as striking a “reasonable balance” between post-9/11 security concerns and legitimate applications of things that go boom.
“We must take all possible steps to keep deadly explosives out of the hands of dangerous individuals seeking to threaten our livelihood and security,” one of the law’s sponsors, Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., said last year. “The Safe Explosives Act is designed solely in the interest of public safety, to close a loophole that could cause mass destruction of property and life.”
But since the law’s passage, experimenters and hobbyists have protested that the new permit requirements could strike a heavy blow against amateur rocketry rather than terrorism.
“Rocketeers are scared of the ATF just because of the way it has behaved in the past” said Mark Spute, executive director of the Utah-based Civilian Experimental Rocketry Test Area. [B]“The ATF is just the bully on the block.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3078927/#.UR0fJ440p9k
The source of the controversy is the Safe Explosives Act, a measure that was signed into law last year and sparked a round of new rule-making by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The ATF’s authority over interstate sales of explosive materials was expanded to sales within states as well.
At the time, congressional backers portrayed the act as striking a “reasonable balance” between post-9/11 security concerns and legitimate applications of things that go boom.
“We must take all possible steps to keep deadly explosives out of the hands of dangerous individuals seeking to threaten our livelihood and security,” one of the law’s sponsors, Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., said last year. “The Safe Explosives Act is designed solely in the interest of public safety, to close a loophole that could cause mass destruction of property and life.”
But since the law’s passage, experimenters and hobbyists have protested that the new permit requirements could strike a heavy blow against amateur rocketry rather than terrorism.
“Rocketeers are scared of the ATF just because of the way it has behaved in the past” said Mark Spute, executive director of the Utah-based Civilian Experimental Rocketry Test Area. [B]“The ATF is just the bully on the block.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3078927/#.UR0fJ440p9k