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9-year-old convinces Colorado town to lift ban on snowball fights

A 9-year-old resident of Severance, Colo., convinced the town’s leaders to overturn an almost 100-year-old ban on snowball fights.

“I think it’s an outdated law,” Dane Best said before a town board meeting Monday night, The Associated Press reports. “I want to be able to throw a snowball without getting in trouble.”

{mosads}His mother, Brooke Best, told a local paper that her son had been talking about snowballs for the last month and a half, since he realized they were illegal within town limits.

Since then, the Bests have dug into Severance’s other ordinances and found that Dane’s guinea pig is also illegal. 

At Monday’s meeting, the assistant town administrator, Kyle Rietkerk, said the rule against snowballs was part of a broader law against throwing stones or missiles, which includes snowballs.

“All of the kids always get blown away that it’s illegal to have snowball fights in Severance,” Rietkerk said.

“So, what ends up happening is [town leaders] always encourage the kids with, ‘You have the power you can change the law.’ No one has.”

Monday night, town leaders voted unanimously to overturn the law.

When board members asked Best who his first target was for a legal snowball, he pointed at his little brother.