Getting to Know Your Perpetrators
Here are a set of links to articles that characterize the three types of perpetrators of acoustic terrorism: the manufacturer, the politician (which is sometimes both), and the boom car operator. We fully encourage you to do your own research. You will find, as we have, that the more you look, the more you validate our findings and the more you will be convinced that things need to change.
Manufacturers: This is a corporate composite that has joined together for the sake of outrageous profit at the expense of the public health and wellbeing under the guise of promoting a "healthy hobby" and America's long-standing love affair with the automobile. While loving one's car never interfered with our physical or mental health or kept us awake during our sleep time (which is daytime for a great many people), their rationale seems to make that love affair a valid reason for promoting HI/LF noise.
Two of the main groups that give the green light to sonic assault are SEMA and MERA. You will find that they use what seems to be a great deal of double-speak in their publications and articles, such as their purpose being to "safeguard" and "expand" America's great hobby. We are not sure what LEGAL aspect of automotive hobbying needs to be safegarded, nor why in the world a corporation that supplies it would want to expand the hobby, but we are pretty sure that if these groups can go into communities (and it appears they have) and repeal reasonable noise ordinances to levels that THEY have decided are somehow better, and if they can promote this hobby, that they will make lots and lots and lots of money.
Here is MERA's Public Member List. Makes a great boycott list.
Politicians: We can't go too far without naming one of the chief pepetrators of this madness -- Darryl Issa. Darryl Issa is the former chairman of the powerful Consumer Electronics Association. He is the founder of the Mobile Enhancement Retailers Association (MERA), Directed Electronics, and VIPER car audio and alarms.
Issa, a candidate for the United States Senate from California in 2004, is a member of the Congressional Automotive, Performance, and Motorsport Caucus, which advocates legalizing noisy racing equipment on city streets.
We have a terrible time with this as we find it contradictory that a public servant would also be a public nuisance, an instigator of acoustic assault.
Darryl has a lot of company in Washington, and these acquaintences all think that promoting the health of the noise industrial complex is a wonderful thing. This group is called the Congressional Automotive Performance and
Motorsports Caucus and the representatives involved are listed in the link below. See if you can find the abettors from your state on this list. You can easily write to them using the contact tool on our Resources page.
Lone Rangers: There are also a few individuals who seem to know better than the rest of us whether or not we are stressed out of our gourds by their constant bombardment of our inner sanctum. Here is a link of one such pontificate. (Please note: the level of intelligence demonstrated by the writer is considerably above that of those who typically write to us.)
CIUF (Please note: this site contains profane language.)
Boom Car Operators: While some of the offenders are merely misguided Generation Y teens whose mothers never gave them an appropriate swat on the butt or else tried to buy their adoration with expensive stereo equipment, they otherwise tend to be thugs, gansters, gangsta wanna-be's, posers and general run-of-the-mill morons. All of them break the law. Most of them love doing it and don't give a rats ass what you have to say about it.
We know from law enforcement that boom car operators are all too often associated with other crimes (drugs, concealed weapons, robbery, parole violation, outstanding warrants, gang activity, driving with a suspended license, and a host of other violations and direct links to more serious crimes). It should come as no surprise, since the type of person that would spend thousands of dollars on intentionally upsetting good people, without regard to their rights, is the same type of person who has little regard for law and authority.
Much of what we know about boom car operators is provided by the perpetrators themselves. Many, if not most, letters and e-mails they provide are strikingly similar; short-sighted, vituperative, and riddled with errors in both grammar and logic and expound on the same old invalid excuses for their behavior. Fact is - most are too vulgar or obnoxious for us to publish here. If you want an inkling of what they are about, please visit Michael Wright's Web site.