Metro Mayor Wants to Douse Personal Flamethrowers

A Metro Detroit company, Ion Productions Team, manufactures personal flamethrowers. (Screenshot via YouTube)

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No matter how menacing the insect hive in the summer or thick the ice and snow buildup in the winter, Warren Mayor Jim Fouts thinks no good can come from citizens rectifying the problems with personal flamethrowers that can shoot streams of flame 50 feet in the air.

What could possibly go wrong?

“I’m very concerned about it,” Fouts told the Detroit Free Press. “It’s very dangerous in a lot of situations.”

His concerns include accidental house fires, other property damage, and personal injury and death. Fouts also worries that “bad people” will use the devices to commit mayhem that could leave neighborhoods looking like burned out World War II battlefields.

“The pain and death it could impose is overwhelming,” Fouts said.

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However, manufacturers, including Metro Detroit-based Ion Productions Team, defend the personal flamethrowers as the latest device in gardeners’ artillery to resolve some of their most bedeviling problems. They reason that owners shouldn’t be punished for owning a flamethrower just because someone might commit bedlam with the device.

“Vehicles have been used to run people over, hammers and tools have been used as weapons, knives have been employed to cause harm instead of utility, but all of these products have practical uses,” said Chris Byars, CEO and project lead for Ion Productions, which makes the XM42 flamethrower.

“It’s how a product is used that determines punishment for the operator,” Byars added. “Simply owning a particular product should not be a punishable offense. It’s a matter of education and respect for safety.”

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• Should personal flamethrowers be outlawed?

Flamethrowers are also effective to clear brush, ignite a bonfire or just have some fiery fun, according to product manufacturers.

Byars’ company has only one other known competitor, Cleveland-based Xmatters and Throwflame.com. The two companies offer models ranging from $900 to $1,600 in price.

“It’s a tool just like anything else,” Throwflame founder Quinn Whitehead told the Free Press, explaining flamethrowers have been used for more than a century by fire departments, ranchers, farmers and pyrotechnicians.

Some flamethrower owners “just want it for fun (to) impress the neighbors at the BBQ,” Whitehead told CNN Money.

Whitehead used the same argument used by the anti-gun control crowd: If flamethrowers are outlawed, only outlaws will have flamethrowers.

“If someone with malice in their heart wanted to do bad things, there are hundreds of more effective means which are much less expensive,” he told the Free Press. “I believe it’s a similar situation to gun control laws and gun bans in Detroit. Have these new gun regulations helped prevent crime in Detroit? Unfortunately, no. ... Criminals don’t follow laws.”

The flamethrowers are largely unregulated.

Two states, Maryland and California, ban them, but California does allow their use on movie sets even though they’re classified as “destructive devices.” The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives doesn’t regulate flamethrowers because they’re not firearms, and that means owners of the personal devices aren’t subject to FBI background checks, a spokesman told CNN.

Some local jurisdictions have laws prohibiting their use, and Warren’s Fouts thinks his community should join them. His proposal hasn’t gathered much steam, though.

The Warren City Council got its first look at Fouts’ proposed flamethrower ban on Aug. 11 and discussed it briefly Monday during a committee meeting. However, the council put the proposed ban on the back burner, saying it’s not “an immediate priority.”