Mother Of The 22 Year Old That Killed Himself Lighting A Firework Off His Head Wants Stricter Firework Laws

MSN- Devon Staples, 22, was killed instantly this past 4th of July weekend after he attempted to light a firework off the top of his head. Staples became the first firework-related fatality in Maine since the state first legalized fireworks back in 2012. While some may see Staples’ unfortunate accident as a nominee for the Darwin Awards, his mother, Kathleen Staples, sees it as a call for stricter laws regarding who can and cannot handle explosives.

"At least it'd be a little bit more than, 'Here you go,'" the grieving mother told the Associated Press. "That's an explosive. They didn't just hand me a license and put me in the car."

Staples’ mother is now calling for lawmakers to consider safety training courses for anyone who wishes to work with or handle fireworks. Although she said her son thought the firework was a “dud,” meaning it wouldn’t go off, State Fire Marshal Joe Thomas believes that to be unlikely because it had already been fired and he "can't imagine someone would anticipate that it was a dud."



Mom's gonna mom. Can't hate on that. Just those maternal instincts kicking in, trying to make her son sound like less of an idiot. Granted, that's a fool's errand when what he was guilty of was intentionally blowing his own head off, but it's still respectable. You've got to protect your young. That goes from the most bird brained animals all the way up the food chain to human beings. "We should outlaw fireworks because my son was too dumb to use them properly" is like the more fatal version of "my son has 1.5 GPA because he's a bad test taker". If we take the irrational justifications away from motherhood then they are just women who happened to have crapped us out into the world. 

Like I said, love where this mom's head is at (there's an extremely mean spirited joke somewhere in there), but she's just in an impossible situation. It doesn't matter how hard fireworks are to get your hands on, Devon Staples was destined to die stupidly at some point. If it wasn't a firework this July, it would have been smoking at gas station a month from now, or blowing his head off lighting a grill next year. Telling a kid not to light fireworks off his head in a firework training course is like telling a 3rd grader not to pull his pants down and shit in the middle of the classroom. To use her analogy, it's like being told not to stick lit matches in the gas tank during your driver's test. Some things just go without saying. Like for instance, never assume that a firework is going to be a dud. Sure, 1 out of 100 times it just might be, but 1% odds aren't something I would be betting my life on. That's just simple risk evaluation. Devon Staples is a terrible son, there's no doubt about that. However, we can at least respect his mother doing her job as a mother, even if she didn't even believe a single thing that was coming out of her own mouth.