Maryland may be the only state in the country to ban them, but it is in good company: An international treaty also bans flamethrowers, or at least their use against civilians in war.
Flamethrowers, more commonly associated with wars and movies depicting them, were in the news last week when a Glen Burnie man was charged with using one to burn the words “Trump” and “USA” onto the road outside his house. After officials reviewed a TikTok video depicting the flaming graffiti, Craig Philip McQuin was charged with a felony for possession of a destructive device and two misdemeanors for second-degree malicious burning, and malicious destruction of property valued at $1,000 or higher, court records show.
Maryland is apparently the only state in the nation to outright ban flamethrowers, although California requires users to obtain a permit from the state’s fire marshal for devices that “emit or propel a burning stream of combustible or flammable liquid a distance of at least 10 feet.”
How Maryland came to ban flamethrowers when other states left them alone is not entirely clear. And in fact, many are surprised that the weapons of war are readily available online and at gun and sporting goods stores. In 2019 several Democratic House of Representatives members, including Jamie Raskin of Maryland, introduced a bill to ban them that was titled, “Flamethrowers? Really? Act.”
It went nowhere.
After McQuin was charged, Oliver Alkire, spokesman for the Maryland State Fire Marshal, said he did a bit of research on Maryland’s ban and found that the devices were were added to the state prohibition on destructive devices in 1997.The addition lumped flamethrowers in the same category as bombs, grenades, mines, shells, missiles and poison gas.
Alkire, a master deputy state fire marshal, said Maryland has generally been a leader on issues of fire safety, in part from its history of having gone through the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. The state was the first in the nation to require sprinklers in new homes, he said, and to even have a fire marshal, creating his office 130 years ago.
Alkire said the charges against McQuin are the first of their kind that he can recall in his 17 years in the fire marshal’s office.
According to charging documents, McGuin used a “Pulsefire” flamethrower made by Exothermic Technologies, whose website shows that it “cannot be shipped to Maryland” because such devices are “part of the state’s prohibited destructive devices.”
“We can sell it to someone out of Maryland. It’s out of our control if they bring it there,” said Caden Kellagher, who processes orders for the Fort Pierce, Florida,-based company. “We can’t really control who buys a product.”
The company, which is currently running a “holiday sale,” sells two kinds of flamethrowers, including one that can be attached on the underside of something like an assault rifle, Kellagher said.
He said customers use Pulsefires, which run on unleaded gas, to light bonfires or to clear land, such as for agricultural purposes. Or, he noted, simply for spectacle.
“It’s like a little event thing,” Kellagher said, “bring it to Thanksgiving or a gathering of friends.
“It’s a lot of fun,” he said.
The appeal of playing with fire is nothing new of course, and you can find videos on YouTube of people using flamethrowers to weed their yards or clear snow from their driveway.
In 2018, the now seemingly inescapable Elon Musk started selling what he called “not-a-flamethrower” via his Boring Company, an underground, anti-congestion tunneling company. Musk said at the time on Twitter — which he had yet to purchase and rename X — that the company sold 7,000 of them at $500 each in just over two days.
The devices are still touted on the company website, along with a claim that 20,000 have been sold, although it doesn’t seem to offer a way to order them.
McQuin could not be reached by The Sun after the charges were filed, and an attorney who said he was representing him declined to comment.
Fire investigators responded to a vandalism complaint in the Creekside Village development on Nov. 15, 10 days after former president Donald Trump was elected to a second term. They found the burn marks on Hickory Hollow Drive that charging documents said were between 15 and 20 feet in length and approximately 5 feet in width.
“I don’t know what this guy was doing, but that’s not something we would advise doing,” said James Meaney, co-owner of The Flamethrowers Experts, a company that restores military versions of the device and trains collectors and reenactors on their safe use.
Meaney, an active duty Marine master sergeant, acknowledges the appeal of shooting flames — “It’s definitely a rush,” he said — but his main goal is to preserve a lost slice of military history.
Flamethrowers have a long and bloody history of use in war, including in such legendary battles as Iwo Jima and have made for dramatic visuals in any number of war movies.
But, in 1980, at a United Nations conference in Geneva, a so-called Protocol III was adopted prohibiting the use of “incendiary weapons” against civilian populations. Among the weapons “primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat, or combination thereof,” the protocol included “flame throwers, fougasses, shells, rockets, grenades, mines, bombs and other containers of incendiary substances.”
Meaney said as other means of war have replaced flamethrowers, it’s important to restore and maintain the devices used in World War II and Vietnam — in a controlled environment.
“We go to a safe location, a firing range, and we go out and have fun,” he said. “It’s just keeping the little piece of history alive.”
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