I just got back from an all-American family vacation in Arizona. If I had done it in California, I'd have been slapped with fines and gone to jail.

The short weekend excursion involved driving without seatbelts, riding in the bed of trucks, firing fully automatic weapons indoors, pulling off the road into the desert and firing high-powered rifles, driving more than 65mph down the highway, and riding ATV's in non-designated areas.

When we crossed the California border on the way home, you could feel the smothering oppression set in again.

Amazingly, we were able to have all that fun, which would have landed me in prison if I tried it in California, in a responsible manner and everybody had a good time.

Liberals would have been horrified by what we did, even though we did it with common sense.  In one part of the trip, we pulled off onto a desert path in a pickup truck (I can hear liberals gasp).  I took one of my sons into the bed of the truck and we ambled into the desert slowly and carefully, as he grinned from ear to ear. He would have not experienced this in California, unless I have seatbelts installed in the bed of my truck.

At another point in my trip, the kids went off with mom while we fired pistols, shotguns, and rifles against the side of a desert mountain off of a highway, which would have caught law enforcement's attention in California unless we drove out to the middle of nowhere.

Earlier, we had visited a shooting range where we fired a machine gun, which would also have been illegal in California. A worker there noted that people in Arizona get to carry concealed firearms on their person, which would get you arrested in our lovely state unless the government granted you a special permit. I didn't see any shootouts in Arizona even though all these people are carrying guns.

The next day we took a pontoon out onto Lake Havasu. Want to have a beer on the lake? Go for it. In California, better check the rules for each lake. Lake Piru, for example, banned alcohol in 2010.

The all-American vacation that was normal a generation ago is all but banned in California, and the trend is that it's getting worse.