Ladies and gentlemen, there might be a new law coming into Massachusetts. Is it a law making harsher punishments for drunk-driving? No. What about a law with stiffer drug penalties? Nope.

It’s a law limiting how loud the exhaust on my car can be. Wonderful.

The bill is trying to ban the sale or installation of “an exhaust system which has been modified in a manner which will amplify or increase the noise emitted by the exhaust.” Even though these exhausts are better for the environment, since most of them are newer than the older cars they are put on, our government is trying to make me get rid of it.

Please tell me why this is a priority on any lawmakers list. It’s not even like these parts make the cars go faster, they just make them louder. So then, if we are limiting the noise of my car, I am demanding a quieter Massachusetts as a whole.

Lawnmowers are much more annoying than a loud car. Think about it. If I drive by you in a loud car, you hear it for three seconds. If I am your neighbor and I’m mowing my lawn for six hours, starting at 7 a.m. on a Saturday, I think that is a little more annoying.

Get rid of those pesky snow blowers. They are too loud also, and the same thing applies to them that apply to lawnmowers.

There are emissions laws that are extremely strict in Massachusetts that other states don’t even have. Here, for example, you can’t change the location of our catalytic converter. In other states, like most of them, you can do whatever you want to your exhaust. So why are we so tough?

Now, I am annoyed by the sounds of certain cars. I drive fast cars, not little Honda Civics with a six-inch fart pipe. I find those extremely annoying, but to each his own. I drive American muscle, and I love it, just like thousands of other people.

In Canada they are trying to ban the use of all aftermarket parts, regardless of if they make the car safer or not. Now there’s a great idea. My old car had about $10,000 of work in it, and half of it was to make the car safer for me to drive and better for the environment.

If Massachusetts passes this law, you know that the ban of all aftermarket parts is right around the corner. Now that’ll only cost companies millions of dollars and thousands of jobs. But hey, at least it’s for the betterment of our society.

I don’t get the connection between an aftermarket exhaust and idiots racing their cars on the street, and I know that’s why they want to ban all aftermarket parts. The streets are filled with races because there isn’t a legal drag strip in Boson, and that teenagers think they are invincible.

If you go to any of those races, you will notice that the large majority of the people participating are under 20-years-old. So why must they make laws that will hurt law abiding citizens like me?

They are making these laws because someone came to the brilliant conclusion that cutting down all aftermarket parts would then cut down on street racing. And when there was prohibition, no one drank any alcohol, right?

Nothing will stop street racing, and no movie is at fault. Aftermarket parts aren’t the problems, movies aren’t the problem, and my loud exhaust certainly isn’t the problem. I don’t know exactly what the problem is, but I’m sure it falls somewhere between teenagers driving like idiots and the closest drag racing track over an hour away.

Different states are tackling this issue in different ways. Some are well aware that a loud exhaust isn’t the problem, and then some states are like Massachusetts. I have a solution.

Build a legal drag racing strip near Boston. It would cut down on street races, create hundreds of jobs and put a lot of money in the surrounding areas. But I don’t see that happening because of the fact that drag racing has received such a bad image recently that a lot of places don’t want to be associated with it.

Bet hey, my car is too loud, so we need to solve that first.

Matt Elder is a Collegian columnist.