Colorado Democrats are pushing a bill that would require a murderer to kill at least two people before prosecutors can charge first-degree murder. HB 26-1281 would downgrade the killing of “only one other person” to second-degree murder, because apparently one dead body just isn’t enough to get the state’s attention anymore.

Whoa. Even for Colorado Democrats, this one’s special.

The bill is sponsored by Reps. Michael Carter (D-Aurora) and Cecelia Espenoza (D-Denver), along with Sens. Mike Weissman (D-Aurora) and Nick Hinrichsen (D-Pueblo). They claim the current law creates “confusion and imbalance” and that Colorado has been “overly punitive” toward killers. The bill generously makes exceptions for killing cops, children under 12, or killing one person while seriously injuring two or more others with a deadly weapon.

So if you’re keeping score: kill one regular adult in Colorado and the Democrats say that’s basically second-degree stuff. You have to be an overachiever to earn the first-degree charge.

Here’s a name to remember: Michael Carter. He’s the same guy who sponsored HB 25-1206 last year — the “bad shot bill” that would have slashed penalties for attempted murder. If you shot at someone and missed, his bill would have dropped it from a class 2 felony to a class 5 — one to three years, maybe probation. That bill died in committee. So Carter looked at his failed attempt to give a discount on attempted murder and thought, “You know what? Let me try giving a discount on actual murder instead.”

That’s not a flip comment. That’s literally what happened. Same sponsor, one year later, worse bill.

This is also happening alongside SB 26-115, which would let violent offenders petition for resentencing after 20 years — because the sponsors claim the brain “does not fully develop until a person is in their mid-to-late twenties.” (We let 18-year-olds vote, drive, sign contracts, and carry rifles in combat, but sure — murdering someone at 19 shouldn’t really count because your prefrontal cortex was still loading.)

Former DA George Brauchler put it bluntly: “Reclassifying and lowering the penalties for crimes and parole violations may reduce the number of felonies filed in court, and might reduce the number of felons returned to prison, but each makes us demonstrably less safe and creates numerous more victims.”

Since 2010, Colorado has seen a 49% increase in violent crime. Murder up 76%. Aggravated assault up 85%. The state population grew 19.5%. The math doesn’t support blaming growth. The math supports blaming Democrats.

This isn’t a one-off crazy bill. It’s the endgame of a 15-year legislative project, and if you understand the pattern, you can see exactly where it leads.

Here’s the playbook Colorado Democrats have been running since 2010: Step one, pass bills that reduce sentences and expand parole. They’ve passed at least 13 of these since 2010 — everything from making two-time felons probation-eligible to reducing drug crime penalties to making it harder to revoke parole. Step two, close prisons. They’ve shuttered seven correctional facilities and eliminated nearly 6,000 beds. Step three, when the remaining prisons inevitably overflow, declare an “overcrowding crisis” and use it to justify — you guessed it — even more sentence reductions and early releases.

They did exactly this in 2025. Colorado triggered its emergency prison population management plan for the first time ever because the vacancy rate dropped below 3%. The “solution” from the legislature? Not more beds. More bills to let people out and to stop calling crimes what they are.

Sound familiar? San Francisco ran this experiment at warp speed under DA Chesa Boudin. Stopped prosecuting aggressively, focused on “diversion programs,” lowered the jail population. The voters recalled him in 2022 with nearly 60% of the vote. Los Angeles tried the same thing with George Gascon, and voters booted him too. The pattern is always the same: progressive politicians weaken the system, crime goes up, regular people suffer, and eventually the backlash comes.

The difference in Colorado is that Democrats have a 23-12 Senate majority and a 43-21 House edge. There’s no political check. They can pass HB 26-1281 if they want to. The question isn’t whether this bill can pass — it’s whether Governor Polis signs it. And Polis already showed his cards in January when he quietly stopped an early release program, which tells you he knows this stuff is politically radioactive even if his legislature doesn’t.

Mark my words: if this bill passes and Polis signs it, Colorado becomes the test case that every Republican campaign ad in 2028 is built around. “Democrats literally made it legal to murder one person and only get a second-degree charge.” You don’t even have to exaggerate it. The bill says what it says.

And if Polis vetoes it? Then you’ll watch Carter and Weissman come back next year with something slightly less insane, dressed up in different language, designed to accomplish the same thing incrementally. That’s been the pattern for 15 years. The only question is how fast they get there.

Colorado: where your first murder is on the house, and the second one is how they finally take you seriously.