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I'm not sure if being homemade was the reason, but I just heard about a medflight for somebody hit by a homemade firework.

I say this as somebody with a book on how to make them, but I've always been a bit too scared to try.

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Being homemade is (almost) never in and of itself a reason. A lack of knowledge or judgment certainly can be. However often the motivation for DIY is to circumvent regulations to go big but of course one of the primary reasons for such regulations is that the associated consequences when things go wrong are dire. The story could well have turned out the same even if the item had been purchased from a reputable vendor. There's a very good reason the professional shows use barges or large fields and set up a huge exclusion zone around them.

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