If a tree falls in the forest but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? We don’t have the expertise or requisite philosophy degree to answer that, but we do know one thing for certain.

If a law is on the books, but that law is completely disregarded and unenforced, it may as well not even be a law in the first place.

Such is the unfortunate reality of the use of illegal fireworks during the Fourth of July — and around here, that includes the days leading up to and immediately following the actual holiday, as excess stock has to be liquidated and fired into the sky.

Residents throughout Rhode Island, whether in the middle of the countryside or in densely populated urban settings, are besieged each year with a cacophony of explosions as if a cinematic, annual reenactment of The War of 1812 was as essential to the American identity as baseball or apple pie.

These offensive interruptions — set off under the laughable guise of celebrating freedom — damage the psyche of combat veterans who experienced the trauma of real explosions that threatened their lives or killed their friends. After all these soldiers sacrificed to protect their freedoms, a portion of the American populace responds by completely disregarding their mental wellbeing for their own selfish desires.

These explosive assaults rob all array of house pets of their security, and thousands of pet owners of their sanity, as they spend hours trying to soothe a being that doesn’t understand why they should ignore their natural senses that understandably shout at them that Armageddon is occurring around them for hours on end. As a result of this activity, more pets go missing on the Fourth of July than any other day of the year.

Fireworks are indeed a spectacle, but they should also be treated with respect. Uncle Roy shouldn’t be in charge of a backyard fireworks show after a rack of Buds. And yet every year journalists report on stories of people who disrespected their power and paid for it with their lives, including an incident that just occurred this year in Westerly. Houses are set on fire, and thousands are maimed for life across the nation.

This is why fireworks displays are best left to professionals, and are best enjoyed with lots of other people in a setting appropriate for them. Town-sanctioned events should be the only place where such fireworks should be allowed.

And if we just enforced the existing law, which clearly states that all exploding, aerial fireworks are prohibited — they could be.

How about this for an idea? Start enforcing the law that is on the books. Send police to every single call reporting illicit fireworks — or just have them out on patrol to spot them, it’s really not hard to locate them — and start handing out hefty fines like a sketchy fireworks shop hands out M80s to teenagers. Take all the proceeds from this and put it into a fund to finance the most over-the-top, safe, and enjoyable fireworks show your city or town has ever seen for the next year.

In a state that limits where you can buy alcohol, what flavor e-cigarettes you can buy, and allegedly cares about the health and wellbeing of its residents, the state of illegal fireworks in Rhode Island can be seen as nothing less than a complete and utter failure of accountability, to the point where breaking the law seems to be simply accepted.

We will proudly support any group — political, civilian, or otherwise — willing to stand up for people who value tranquility and sanity more than they value the illegal, dangerously juvenile fascination with setting off weapons-grade explosives under an objectively ironic and damaging sense of false patriotism.