Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –  host Leahy welcomed Laura Carno of the Independent Women’s Forum to the newsmakers line.
During the second hour, Carno discussed her latest article related to gun control and the Biden administration explaining that the federal government is behaving more like kings than a government that is there to serve the people. She later advocated for states to stand up to the federal government and not allow for them to enforce their will on local counties and communities when it comes to how they choose to defend themselves.
Leahy: We are joined now by Laura Carno. She’s with the Independent Women’s Forum and she has a terrific article about states pushing back against the legal but not legitimate President Biden’s efforts at gun control to try to destroy the Second Amendment. Good morning Laura. Thanks for joining us.
Carno: Good morning. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Leahy: I understand you live in Colorado and have some big fights out there.
Carno: Oh my goodness. Yes. In 2013 we re-called a couple of state senators over their gun control votes and it’s calmed down a lot here on the gun control front in Colorado. But goodness, you can never rest. And they’ll try and take whatever little bits they can.
Leahy: So just from your bio. I have to read this because it’s such a perfect fit for our audience in our program. Laura Carno is a Colorado citizen who understands that politicians are not kings endowed with some birthright to partial out our freedoms in tiny doses as they see fit. She knows it’s not the job of hired civil servants to make decisions on how we live our lives in big ways and small ways. Laura that is spectacular. We agree 100 percent.
Carno: Yes. And the government, the bureaucrats, the politicians they so often get that relationship upside down where they believe that they are there to guide us. And if not for them how would we know how to live our lives? They get that relationship upside down. We are actually the ones who have the rights and who have all of the choices on how to live our lives. And they’re supposed to just be defending our freedoms and defending our rights. Not bossing us around and pushing us in the direction they wish we would go.
Leahy: I’ve only been to Colorado a couple times but my sense is the state is a little bit bifurcated shall we say. You’ve got lefties in Boulder. And probably lefties in Denver. And actually, people who are more dominated by individual liberties in the Colorado Springs area. Do I have that right?
Carno: Yeah, you have that exactly right. We refer to it as the Denver-Boulder Metro area that is if you looked at a map, those are the blue areas. And then most rest of the state is pretty red. But I’ll give you an example. In Pueblo, which is south of Colorado Springs it’s a majority Democrat area but they voted for Donald Trump.
It’s a steel union area. So a Pueblo Democrat is very different than a Boulder Democrat. And so it’s a very interesting state that our third congressional district. We just elected Lauren Boebert to Congress who is quite the firebrand and Second Amendment supporter. So we’ve got very different districts than what people would think of in Denver and Boulder.
Leahy: So your article at the Independent Women’s Forum: States Push Back Against Biden Gun Control Scheme. Which states are leading the way in this?
Carno: Yeah, and so thank God for the Tenth Amendment and we can do different things in the states and the federal government. And I would question whether the feds even have the legal authority to do most of the things that they do. As of about a week and a half ago, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, and a bunch more states have passed constitutional carry.
Leahy: Let me help you out a little bit. D.C., Utah, and Montana have joined 16 other states. I have good news for you here in Tennessee. We are based in Nashville, which is the state capital. We have in-studio and on the line, many many state legislators join our program often. And it looks like constitutional carry is going to pass here in Tennessee.
Carno: I just saw that one. So now we’ve got 18 states that have passed that to recently Utah and Montana have passed constitutional carry. Great news because program states are very concerned that the feds are going to do something that addresses this. So the states are saying this far and no further. And then the other thing that we’re seeing our states and we have just dozens and hundreds of counties that have already declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries sinks or sanctuary counties against their state.
Now we have many states that are saying we’re actually going to declare ourselves Second Amendment sanctuary states against what the feds are doing. Nebraska just took this up yesterday. And so it’s wonderful to see in the places where we have good freedom-loving people are in the majority to be able to say again, this far no further. You’re not coming into our state’s borders and bossing us around to join all of those counties whose county sheriff’s and county commissioners have said you’re not going to come in here and tell us how our citizens may or may not defend themselves.
You mentioned the bifurcated politics in Colorado. We just had this isn’t on the gun front, but lots of your listeners will understand this, we just had the Boulder-Denver corridor vote to reintroduce rules into Colorado. Well, they’re not being reintroduced into Denver and Boulder. All of the areas where these rules are going to be reintroduced voted 80/20 against the measure. Yet they are having this forced upon them. So it’s very similar to what the states are doing. Whether it’s about voting laws. States have to stand up and say to the federal government, you’re not doing that here. We’re in charge of our state.
Leahy: Very interesting. Yeah, we see that, and let me see if you would agree with this characterization. I think there are about 35 states where freedom is still a possibility. Do you see it that way as well?
Carno: Yeah, and I would say that’s a good number. In my other organization FASTER Colorado where we train armed school staff, we come up with that 34, 35 states that also allow armed school staff in their schools. They have a lawful process. I know it’s a little bit different topic, but when you look at states that trust individuals to in this case care for children in schools as opposed to expecting the big arm of government to do that I think you see some freedoms lining up where the government understands that citizens are in charge.
Leahy: Why do you think Democrats have become so stupid and lacking in common sense?
Carno: Oh gosh. (Chuckles) becoming or have always been?
Leahy: Have always been and now they are in power and they’re demonstrating their stupidity.
Carno: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I’ve been following gun policy over the last 10 years and talking about this on a fairly regular basis. We used to be able to look at pro-gun Democrats as as an ally. There were and there still are some pro-gun Democrats who would absolutely even if it was similar to how I described Pueblo, Colorado, Democrat areas because of maybe unions and that sort of thing.
But they were very pro-gun areas and these were pro-gun Democrats. You couldn’t get elected unless you were pro-gun in that area. And now we’re seeing fewer and fewer pro-gun Democrats to the point where it’s difficult for me to find them. And more common sensed, blue dog Democrats, and Reagan Democrats, they’re being supplanted and replaced by this ultra woke left.
I don’t even want to call them liberals. They’re leftists who want to completely change our country. But I think that people like us are still in the majority. We’re just quiet and silent because so many people are concerned about being canceled. Concerned about being fired from their jobs if they say the wrong thing.
Leahy: Exactly.
Carno: I think you’re right that we’re still a majority out there. It will be interesting to see what happens in the midterms, with governor’s races, and in 2022 because I think we absolutely have a chance to take this back. And then we better do the right thing with it.
Leahy: Two questions to close out for you. I’ll do them. Both of them. One is has Colorado permanently gone blue or is there a chance that it might go red? And secondly, you know, we have The Tennessee Star and in five other states where we have conservative state-based news outlets. Does Colorado need a Colorado Star? We got about a minute left for that.
Carno: We’ll take a Colorado Star. Our Denver Post is terrible. So we will definitely take you. Come visit Colorado and bring your paper. I think there is a chance for Colorado to go back to red. This is why I do full-time work on many many projects to work on moving Colorado back where it belongs because I believe the majority of Coloradans are freedom-loving people and libertarian-leaning people who just want to be left alone.
Leahy: I think as they say in Casablanca, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship Laura. (Chuckles) Thanks for joining us here. Perhaps we’ll come out and do a Colorado Star. Laura Carno with the Independent Women’s Forum.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Laura Carno” by Laura Carno.Â
