Are fireworks allowed in the Boy Scouts of America?

Updated 2023

Watching fireworks with your Scouts can add some sparkle to your Fourth of July celebration. Setting any fireworks off at camp or with your unit? Best leave that to the professionals, since fireworks in Scouting is on the Guide to Safe Scouting’s prohibited and unauthorized activity list.

With Independence Day approaching, it’s important to remember that setting off fireworks is an unauthorized activity in the Boy Scouts of America, except when the display is conducted by licensed experts.

Here’s the specific line from the Guide to Safe Scouting:

The Boy Scouts of America prohibits the following activities (with exceptions in italics):

19. Fireworks, including selling of fireworks (exception: fireworks displays by a certified or licensed fireworks control expert)

In other words, watching professionally produced displays — like those at a sporting event or community-wide celebration — is acceptable. Creating your own show at this weekend’s campout at so-and-so’s ranch isn’t permitted.

Selling fireworks

Scouts and Venturers can earn money for their adventures by selling a ton of different products — popcorn, wreaths and mulch are a few popular ones.

Fireworks, though, shouldn’t be sold. As specified in the same quote from above, selling fireworks is a prohibited activity in Scouting.

Parade floats and hayrides

The Fourth of July often means parades, and community members love seeing Scouts and Venturers marching through the streets.

There’s a relevant part in the Guide to Safe Scouting that applies here, too:

The BSA’s prohibition on the transportation of passengers in the backs of trucks or on trailers may be tempered for parade floats or hayrides, provided that the following points are strictly followed to prevent injuries:

  1. Transportation to and from the parade or hayride site is not allowed on the truck or trailer.
  2. Those persons riding, whether seated or standing, must be able to hold on to something stationary.
  3. Legs should not hang over the side.
  4. Flashing lights must illuminate a vehicle used for a hayride after dark, or the vehicle must be followed by a vehicle with flashing lights.

What’s with all the rules?

This and other Health and Safety-focused posts may make it sound like the BSA is spending a lot of time telling you what not to do. 

Commenter mikemenn puts it into perspective:

For the most part, what’s prohibited nowadays has probably saved hundreds/thousands of injuries that occurred back in the ’50s and ’60s.

Fireworks are fun to watch. … But if the mission statement is “Scouts come first,” then rules such as no fireworks are the thing I want to see. There are other ways to have fun.

Well said, Mike.


Photo courtesy CJ Nusbaum


About Bryan Wendell 3282 Articles
Bryan Wendell, an Eagle Scout, is the founder of Bryan on Scouting and a contributing writer.