As Mary Prewitt, the state director of the Humane Society of the United States, argued in a commentary on the Opinion pages last week, it’s a problem that cockfighting is a misdemeanor in Kansas and a felony in neighboring states. As evidence that Kansas is now the “jurisdiction of choice” for cockfighters, Prewitt cited the recent cockfighting bust in northeast Sedgwick County, which led to 12 arrests. The current ban was viewed as the best the Legislature could get in 2002, when one lawmaker referred to cockfight ringleaders as “some misguided guys who want to kill a chicken on Sunday afternoon”; lawmakers need to take another look at the law. Sedgwick County Commissioner Kelly Parks also was right to urge residents to report such activity: “If you see a pickup full of roosters going kind of slow down your township road, they’re not going to Colonel Sanders.”
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