Rep. Denny Altes, R-Fort Smith, has filed a slew of bills already this session and not all of them are about guns, as Leslie mentioned below. HB 1043 would ban stores from providing one-time use shopping bags to customers in an effort to encourage the use of reusable bags. Now comes a group called the Center for Consumer Freedom that opposes the bill, saying reusable bags contain large amounts of lead and are breeding grounds for bacteria. So who is CCF? According to their website:

A growing cabal of activists has meddled in Americans’ lives in recent years. They include self-anointed “food police,” health campaigners, trial lawyers, personal-finance do-gooders, animal-rights misanthropes, and meddling bureaucrats. Their common denominator? They all claim to know “what’s best for you.” In reality, they’re eroding our basic freedoms—the freedom to buy what we want, eat what we want, drink what we want, and raise our children as we see fit.

I say the bill is probably a good idea, just one that won’t get very far. But who knows? A lot of European countries make you pay for your bags, which encourages customers to bring their own.

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