I scored a Quest 10 rocket pack with the mini rockets at the last Hobby Lobby sale and was displaying it to a 30ish buddy at his home Friday. He did the usual, "Rockets were great when I was younger, it's amazing how cool things are nowadays. Lets go to the park tomorrow, take the kids, and launch these". Unfortunately, after educating him on the long laundry list of why we couldn't shoot them at his large back yard (city code) the park (city code), the local schools (insurance and liability which I think he still doesn't believe me over) he got this sad look on his face and said gee, it's s shame we can't expose our kids to the great things of our childhood due to the overwhelming stupidity of a few people and a bunch of lawyers (which was funny from him since he works in a law firm).
His kids have a full schedule. They are good kids but they already have that burb stress load. School, Girls scouts, softball, etc. And I got the "girls aren't interested in these things so forget donating them to the scout troop" soccer mom speech. They are the kind that schedule play dates so their kids can coordinate schedules with other burbites. But for that one moment we had a chance to expose multiple people safely to the hobby and it couldn't get done. What really got me was the hausfrau said that the things weren't safe. Her youngest still had this huge scab on her nose from a roller blading accident and the older one had a serious knee injury from softball last season, but rockets are dangerous.
Until NAR starts to spend real time and effort in defeating the entrenched antifun burbites, especially in the parks and schools, the hobby will limp along in the grey zone, with a pitiful membership base fighting with the gov over the upper end of the hobby.