(You can listen to this column, read by the author, here.)
Have you ever played, “If I were king”?
If I were king … I would outlaw the designated hitter rule in Major League Baseball.
If I were king … I would require all oatmeal-raisin cookies be made with hunter-safety orange food dye. How many times have you walked across the room for what seemed a mouthwatering chocolate chip cookie only to find after a bite it’s a dirty, disgusting, evil oatmeal-raisin?
If I were king … I would make driving slowly in the passing lane punishable by death.
If I were king … I would require all news reporters to list who they voted for president on their byline.
If I were king … every home would be required to have a firearm and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. PBS would air nothing but reruns of the original “Star Trek.” All neckties would be burned, and on Tuesdays everyone would wear their underwear on the outside of their clothes.
You can play this game ad nauseam. But the sad reality is you’re not king.
Well, you’re not king unless you’re part of the progressive jihad at the state Capitol. They’re mastering this game of making Coloradans bend to their virtue-signaling idiosyncrasies. I mean, do you miss your plastic shopping bags yet?
Forget registering guns, if state Rep. Regina English were king, all hamsters would be registered with the state.
You cannot make this crap up.
House Bill 1163 creates a statewide pet registry requiring the licensing of all livestock and pets, right down to a kid’s goldfish. The cost to register the pet would be $8.50. But if your dog or cat is not sterilized, it jumps up to $16.
So, a boy who buys two male mice, for far less than the tax to register them, finds out one is female as it just had a litter of 10 little mice babies. He’ll have to break his piggy bank for 85 bucks to keep them. At this point, Dad feeds the baby mice to the cat, bringing the rural practice of “shoot, shovel and shut up” into urban apartments.
This type of “if I were king” legislation has all the fingerprints of our first gentleman, Jared Polis’ animal-crazed hubby Marlon Reis. After the disaster that was Prop HH, the legislature is creating a property tax on your guinea pig.
The end goal of this is not to get your hamster to wear a dog collar. But it’s yet another attack on Colorado’s livestock industry and a way to create a sin tax for buying pets.
If state Sen. Chris Hansen were king, he’d indoctrinate children into his climate alarmism by giving those who can parrot back his dogma of environmental extremism an extra special gold-star on their high school diploma.
Under Senate Bill 14, when kids are taught to believe what he believes, they get a “Seal of Environmental Literacy” endorsement on their diploma.
Mind you, he is pushing this in the state where reading scores have plummeted so far you can’t call the diploma itself a “Seal of Reading Literacy.”
When I’m king, I’ll add the “Seal of Economic Literacy.” Those poor little kids’ heads will explode as one side of their brain is taught to save the earth, all energy must come from bunny flatulence, while the other side of their brain will do the simple math showing we will go bankrupt without making a dent in climate change as China continues to belch out coal-fire power plants daily.
If state Sen. Sonja Jaquez was king, she’d mercifully still allow Coloradans to keep their concealed weapons permits, but just not allow them to carry guns where they need them.
Her bill expands the definition of “sensitive area” to include the places where mass shootings occur, like schools, churches, synagogues and mosques, even when such establishments are private.
Forty-one Colorado school districts have trained conceal-carrying armed staff to protect our children. Mass shootings in churches like the New Life Church in Colorado Springs were stopped by concealed carry holders.
In her kingdom, these children and worshippers are not worth protecting.
There was a saying about gay marriage. If you’re a man and don’t like gay marriage, don’t marry a dude.
If you don’t like concealed carry, don’t carry a gun.
Mel Brooks said it all: “it’s good to be the king.”
Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.
