First off, if you need a 4x4 just to get to your house, where the hell do you live? Most SUV drivers these days are Mall Rangers who might have a gravel driveway. And if you do regularly have to haul 200 gallons of water, I don't begrudge you your SUV to begin with, because you actually need the thing. Though I have to think that this guy doesn't do all that much heavy hauling, and besides which nobody should be immune from fuel efficiency standards. I find it utterly impossible to believe that in this day and age of $3+/gal gasoline that there's still macho assholes like this who aren't bothered by it. (At least I assume they aren't bothered by a corrupt White House that is allowing the oil companies to jerk around the market and claim with a straight face and record profits on the balance sheet that they can't keep prices down for whatever reason they pulled out of a hat this week.)
Gun control? Thomas Jefferson did have, I think, a valid point about the occasional need for armed popular revolution, but what has the ravings of fundamentalist gun nuts (yeah, I used the f-word) brought us other than xenophobic hermits with closets full of guns they will never get a chance to use and gangbangers turning the streets of our cities into a bad (but no less deadly) parody of urban warfare?
Gun control is a tough issue, no question. But I don't see too many people paying much attention to the "well-regulated" part of "well-regulated militia", and as many of these people either are or are closely associated with tax protestors, the whole lot of them come off as a bunch of spoiled, stupid crybabies who have no respect for the rule of law.
Just remember, before Kevin Costner turned "The Postman" into an incomprehensible garble of a movie, it was a book about a world where gun nuts, survivalists, and militia types brought civilization to its knees...
