March 21, 2013 09:10 AM UTC

Time for reporters to stop asserting that Colorado has a "Wild West image"

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• by: Jason Salzman

[POLS NOTE: We agree — enough already]

In their story about the final passage of Colorado's gun-safety laws, The Denver Post's Lynn Bartels and Kurtis Lee referenced Colorado's alleged "Wild West" image, both in a headline ("3 new gun bills on the books in Colorado despite its Wild West image") and paragraph two, which noted that the bill signing took place 22 miles from the exact spot where "frontiersman Buffalo Bill Cody is buried, a tourist attraction in a state noted for its Wild West and independent background."

To be fair, The Post should have noted that Hick signed the bills about six miles from Aurora, where a mass killer with a gun last summer shot down 12 people in movie theater and wounded 70 others.

But beyond that nit pic, you really have to wonder how much of a "Wild West" image Colorado really has these days, outside of the mind of Sen. Greg Brophy (and even he has a pink gun).

The Post didn't provide a poll or anything to support its assertion of a Wild West image for Colorado, but you could argue that the "Wild West image" is now completely overshadowed by an outdoorsy, healthy, skiing, pot-smoking image that's completely in line with commonsensical gun-safety laws.

In that regard, it would have made more sense to point out that Hick signed the gun-safety bills two miles from LoDo, whose busting-out growth is emblematic of Colorado's dying Wild West image.

In any case, what Hick did yesterday was completely in line with the Colorado's modern "brand." Ask all those cultural creatives out there.

The Post's knee-jerk look back to Bill Cody needs to be revised.