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An online left-wing magazine in Canada is calling for the sale of pickup trucks to be banned unless the purchaser can prove that they really need one in their lives, and this has Americans worried that the United States could be next.
In a piece published this week, Passage magazine managing editor Davide Mastracci argued that the long-term goal is to “shift away from relying on private vehicles entirely,” but that for now, he’d like to start with the iconic, American-created pickup truck. Why? Because of the alleged threat posed by climate change.
“[D]rastically cutting emissions from the transportation sector is of the utmost importance for a successful climate strategy. One way to help do so is to ban the sale of pickup trucks to all consumers unless they’re able to meet strict requirements to prove it will be used primarily for work purposes,” he wrote.
Could this really happen, though? The truth is it already is, to an extent. The Canadian government has already declared that new gas- and diesel-engine cars, as well as light trucks, are to be entirely banned by 2035, according to Autoweek.
Speaking on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle” this Friday, host Laura Ingraham wondered if the United States will be next.
“I know a lot of people say, ‘Oh come on, that’s in Canada, that’s never coming here.’ But they used to say that about what stuff’s happening in California [that] always ends up coming across the rest of the country,” she said.
Listen:
(Video: Fox News)
In fact, virtually the same thing happened in Canada, except in their case, the idea originated in Europe.
“Canada’s plans follow the actions of a number of European countries and individual cities to ban the sales of gas and diesel passenger cars in the coming years, with several countries aiming to phase out internal-combustion vehicles between 2030 and 2040,” according to Autoweek.
Meanwhile, some localities in the U.S. already have their own pickup truck bans. Take Flossmoor, a reportedly “elite” neighborhood in the Chicago area.
In 2013, Luke Lambert and his wife purchased a home in the neighborhood. Two years later, he bought a pickup truck. That’s when the problems began.
“Then he got a phone call from the police: Pickups can’t park in Flossmoor’s residential areas unless garaged or being unloaded. His garage wasn’t big enough, so he parked at his wife’s grandmother’s about 10 miles away. Now he is leading a crusade to overturn Flossmoor’s 43-year restriction on America’s most popular vehicle,” as reported in 2018 by The Wall Street Journal.
Speaking with the Journal at the time, he described the village as elitist: “They think of the town as elite, but it’s really elitist,” he said.
Three years later, Fox News contributor Johnny “Joey” Jones echoed that very same point while speaking with Ingraham about the idea of banning pickup trucks.
“You know, this highlights a really important issue, which is [that] the strongest divide in America is the divide between urban and rural America,” he said.
“I mean, it’s a complete cultural shift. We live two very different lives. I know because I dip into urban America for work often enough. They don’t understand how we live. This really isn’t political. This isn’t partisan. This is a lifestyle and cultural divide,” he added.
As an example, he argued that people driving regular cars out in the country are at a much higher risk of “running over a deer and getting killed by it.”
“It’s just little things like that that people don’t have any respect for because it’s not the life that they live, and they just don’t understand why a normal American might want a four-wheel drive vehicle,” he said.
Another issue, according to Ingraham, is the trade factor.
“During the pandemic, initially the sales of automobiles fell, but at the [same] time, shoppers were still snapping up pickups, and they accounted for 20 percent of the new car market, up from 18.3 in 2019,” she noted.
This is true.
“Even as auto sales plunged by double digits because of the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. car buyers continued to show their allegiance to pickup trucks,” Forbes reported in January.
“Shoppers snapped up nearly 3 million full- and midsize pickup trucks in 2020. Although that’s a 5.8% drop compared with 2019, it’s smaller than the 17% plunge in new car sales last year. Pickup trucks now account for 20.1% of the new car market, up from 18.3% in 2019, according to sales data from Motor Intelligence,” the outlet added.
Continuing her remarks, Ingraham noted that these sales are where America still has an “edge against our European counterparts.”
Jones agreed.
“It’s the one thing we do best when it comes to automobiles. We make the best pickup trucks in the world,” he said.
Finishing up the discussion, he added that if some left-wing American administration (perhaps even the Biden administration) does ever ban pickup trucks, chances are it’ll backfire on them.
“You know, when they came after guns, Americans responded by creating nine million more new gun owners. And I can tell you right now, if they come after pickup trucks, Americans are already trying to get their hands on them they’re nowhere to be found,” he said.
As for Jones’ pickup truck, he vowed to Ingraham that it ain’t going nowhere.
“In the words of Charlton Heston at the NRA annual meeting, from my cold, dead hands will you pull my pickup truck away from my life,” he said.
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Vivek@bizpacreview.com
V. Saxena is a staff writer for BizPac Review with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University.
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