North Colorado Seeks Status as 51st State to Escape Gun, Energy Rules

Colorado residents fed up with a law cracking down on gun ownership and a rule forcing residents to purchase costly renewable energy have a scheme to escape the new restrictions – create the nation’s 51st state of North Colorado.

The idea to add another star to the American flag is taking hold in 10 northern counties with a ballot vote in the counties proposed for this fall.

Weld County Commission Sean Conway told The Colorado Observer that the governor’s anti-rural bills have sparked a serious movement.

“We’ve had citizens coming to our hearings for months asking us to please do something. This is for real,” said Conway, whose county is larger than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island.

The new environmental mandate is the last straw for county commissioners, forcing them to double their use of costly renewable energy. Residents are also leery of legislative efforts to curtail the region’s billion-dollar stronghold in oil and gas development.

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The movement is already getting support from Washington.

“The people of rural Colorado are mad, and they have every right to be," Republican Rep. Cory Gardner of Colorado said in a statement.

“The governor and his Democrat colleagues in the statehouse have assaulted our way of life, and I don't blame these people one bit for feeling attacked and unrepresented by the leaders of our state,” Gardner said.

Gov. John Hickenlooper's office insists the gun background checks are popular with voters, and a political science professor at the University of Northern Colorado called the idea of a new state a “crackpot idea by a bunch of crackpot commissioners,” reports the Denver Post.

“Some will just call it Crackpottopia,” Steve Mazurana said.

The last state to split in two was Virginia in 1863 to form the new state of West Virginia. In addition to the county ballots, the state and Congress would also have to approve the measure.