Germans typically turn their country into a war zone on New Year’s Eve, blowing the begeezus out of every small to medium-large object they can get their fingers on (fingers included) with big honking fireworks for hours and hours and hours on end. It’s just what they do.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon how you look at it), they are not “alone” this year and some communities are now banning setting off these fireworks near or on the grounds of the many refugee centers located in Germany now “out of concern about the psychological effects on refugees,” a lot of whom having come here from real war zones. As far as bad ideas from local government go, maybe this one isn’t that bad at all.

In der Ersten Verordnung zum Sprengstoffgesetz heißt es: “Das Abbrennen pyrotechnischer Gegenstände in unmittelbarer Nähe von Kirchen, Krankenhäusern, Kinder- und Altersheimen sowie Reet- und Fachwerkhäusern ist verboten.” Kommunen können darüber hinaus weitere Verbotsbereiche bestimmen.