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A Missouri lawmaker on Tuesday expressed opposition to an assault weapons ban proposed by Democrats by taking the bill to a local shooting range and riddling it with bullet holes.

In a shocking video posted to YouTube, Republican state Rep. Eric Burlison explains that House Bill 545 would make it a Class C Felony to possess a military-style assault weapon.

"If you don't relinquish these weapons then you'll be a felon and you'll potentially serve in jail," Burlison says, as the names of the four Democratic state lawmakers sponsoring the bill are displayed on the video.

To gauge community reaction to the bill, Burlison travels to a local gun store and shooting range where he meets a woman who thinks the bill is "confusing" and creates "too much red tape."

"I just found out that they're going to make my grandpa go turn in his guns," the woman frets. "A felon! It's nuts! And who's going to administrate all these laws? You know, we're just building a bigger government."

"What do you make of House Bill 545?" the lawmaker asks an assault weapon-wielding man at the firing range.

"It's a great bill," the man deadpans in a rehearsed cadence.

"Really?" Burlison asks, trying to appear surprised.

"Yeah, it's great target practice," the man replies.

After no less than 20 rounds are fired at the legislation, Burlison presses a button to retrieve the paper from the shooting alley.

"You're right!" the lawmaker exclaims. "It does make for a good bill!"

A law recently proposed by Missouri state Rep. Mike Leara’s (R) would make it a Class D felony to introduce any legislation -- like House Bill 545 -- that “further restricts the right of an individual to bear arms."

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Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) on Sunday lashed out at the National Rifle Association (NRA), suggesting the "venal" organization had been corrupted to the point that it was taking money from gun manufacturers to "provide weapons" to children as young as 8 years old.

In an appearance on CNN, host Candy Crowley asked the California senator if she agreed that opposition from Democrats would make it tough to pass her recently-proposed assault weapons ban.

"Because the NRA is venal," Feinstein explained. "They come after you, they put together large amounts of money to defeat you. They did this [before the assault weapons ban was passed] in '93 and they intend to continue it."

"Are they venal or do they just disagree with you?" Crowley wondered.

"The NRA has become an institution of gun manufacturers," Feinstein insisted. "This morning on the front page of the New York Times, I was reading about their program now to provide weapons and training for youngsters from 8 years old to 15 years old. And this is supported by the gun manufacturers."

"In other words, here is a whole new group of people that we can get these weapons to. They just don't happen to be adults, they're children."

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Former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says that AR-15 military-style rifles should not be banned and that it is just "lovely propaganda" to call them "assault weapons."

Following the introduction on Thursday of Sen. Diane Feinstein's (D-CA) bill to ban assault weapons, CNN host Piers Morgan reminded Gingrich that Aurora shooter James Holmes used an AR-15 that could fire 100 bullets in a minute and it was legal under current law.

"How many more bullets do you need to fire, Mr. Speaker, before that qualifies as a dangerous killing machine by your criteria?" Morgan wondered.

"Well, by my criteria, and this goes back to the question of what you respect, Piers," Gingrich asserted. "I think the Second Amendment really matters."

"I put it to you that an AR-15 military-style assault weapon was used in the last five mass shootings," Morgan pointed out.

"It's not a military-style assault weapon," Gingrich insisted. "Look, this is a lovely propaganda."

"What else do you call then?" Morgan pressed. "A machine that can fire 100 bullets in a minute. What else do you call it?"

"I would simply say to you that millions of people, by your own definition, own an AR-15," the Georgia Republican explained. "They're law-abiding. They think it is their right under our Constitution to own it, and don't kid the rest of us."

"[T]he reason you find so many of us, and by the way, it's a substantial majority -- I think the last time I saw, 63 percent of the American people agree that the Second Amendment is actually there to protect us from tyranny," Gingrich continued. "The reason you find so many of us very reluctant to go down this road is we believe each step down this road leads to the next step and the next step and the next step."

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A pro-Second Amendment group in Georgia has partnered with a gun shop in the state to give away a free AR-15 assault rifle -- like the one used to slaughter 20 children in Newtown last month -- in an effort to oppose new gun control legislation.

In a press release obtained by Mother Jones on Monday, Georgia Gun Owners said that it would be providing one AR-15 courtesy of Armistead Arms in Alpharetta "to alert, activate and mobilize gun owners in every corner of the state to oppose the Feinstein Gun Ban and others being touted in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere across the country."

An entry form for the giveaway explains that "[f]irearms prize winners must meet all legal requirements and will be subject to a dealer’s background check."

In addition to opposing Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) proposed assault weapons ban, Georgia Gun Owners also recently encouraged its members to support a Georgia bill that would allow gun owners to have a concealed weapon without a permit.

Savannah-Chatham Metro Police Chief Willie Lovett told WTVM that he was "totally opposed" to doing away with concealed-carry permits because it just made things "easier for criminals."

"To confront someone who shouldn't have a weapon at all, yet, not know if they have a permit for that weapon puts us in a bad situation," Lovett explained.

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Fox News host Eric Bolling on Friday insisted that assault-style rifles which can shoot "four or five rounds per second" were "protected under the Constitution."

In his weekly appearance on Fox & Friends, Fox News host Geraldo Rivera predicted that President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden would be successful in enacting some measures to control gun violence after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, but it would be difficult to ban weapons like the Bushmaster AR-15 that was used to slaughter 20 children.

"There really is some movement now for the first time in many decades to have some meaningful reform," he explained. "What I don't expect -- I think it's a long shot, I think the Second Amendment advocates are very strong, they have an excellent case constitutionally -- and it's going to be very, very difficult to ban assault-style weapons. I would love to see them banned except for sanctioned gun clubs, law enforcement and the military."

"You need to address, when you say assault-style weapons," Bolling interrupted. "Because most people understand an assault weapon is currently, not necessarily banned, but almost impossible to own as a civilian."

"You're talking about a fully automatic," Rivera pointed out. "But you're also enough of a gun advocate to know that with a semi-automatic, you can get off four or five rounds per second."

"Absolutely," Bolling agreed. "And that's protected under the constitution. And why are they even putting that in discussions?"

"When does the liberal left say, 'Enough, semi-automatic rifles are banned'? Boom. Then one day, they say, 'You know what? Semi-automatic handguns are illegal also,'" he added.

"Why do you need 30 rounds in the clip of your Glock [handgun], in the clip of you 9 mm?" Rivera wondered. "Why do you need 30 rounds? What are you going to do with 30 rounds in your pistol?"

The Fox News morning show then played a 2008 clip of then-candidates Biden and Obama promising not to take people's shotguns, which was accompanied by a red siren and a graphic that read, "Hypocrisy Alert."

"A lot of people are afraid that one thing is going to lead to another," co-host Steve Doocy opined.

"I think that paranoia is unfortunate," Rivera replied. "I think when you examine those people who are stocking up arsenals of AR-15s and .223 Bushmasters, they are often people who are so deeply suspicious of their own government that it is bitterly ironic that these are the same people who claim a mantel of patriotism."

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While discussing the White House commission on gun violence meeting this week, which the NRA has been invited to attend, along with Vice President Joe Biden's remarks that an executive order is on the table as part of a solution to curb the gun violence in the United States, Howard Fineman did his best to pin down MSNBC's The Cycle co-host S.E. Cupp and get an answer as to why any civilian out there needs an assault weapon or a high capacity magazine. To on one's surprise, she couldn't give him an answer.

Rather than answering his question, she started playing games with semantics on what the definition of an assault rifle, or high capacity, or rapid fire was and claimed that there were reasons someone would want them outside of the military or specialized police forces. When Fineman asked her to give one example, she punted and said she didn't want to take up the time allotted to the other hosts.

I still don't know why MSNBC hired Cupp. She's as thick as a brick and takes great pride in just being as annoying as humanly possible rather than bringing a bit of intellectual honesty to single debate. This is just the latest example of what she does on a daily basis to make sure this stinker of a show stays exactly that.

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A former Marine says that an Democrats are like murderous dictator Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler's Third Reich because they are pushing to ban assault weapons in the wake of the recent slaughter of 20 elementary school students with a Bushmaster AR-15 in Connecticut.

In a letter to Sen. Diane Feinstein last year, retired Corporal Joshua Boston vowed not to register his AR-15 assault rifle because "I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one."

"I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America," Boston wrote. "I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American."

Fox News host Steve Doocy spoke to Boston on Monday after his letter went viral on the Internet.

"I think you -- like a lot of people, Joshua -- are worried that the federal government is going to come after our guns," Doocy observed.

"It's something we've seen happen time and time again in history," Boston explained. "With Stalin, it happened in Cambodia and then, of course, the Third Reich. No one saw that coming until it was too late."

The former Marine warned that gun-free zones made schools "a hunting ground for the predators in our society."

"Sure, and I believe that Sandy Hook Elementary was a gun-free zone and we know what happened there," Doocy agreed.

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Lawrence O'Donnell read the entire op-ed which appeared in the L.A. Times in his rewrite segment this Thursday evening: Loughner’s Judge Makes Conservative Plea For Gun Control:

Larry Alan Burns, the federal district judge in San Diego who just last month sentenced Tuscon shooter Jared Lee Loughner to seven consecutive life terms plus 140 years in federal prison, is no darling of the gun control movement.

Burns is a self-described conservative, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, and he agrees with the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia vs. Heller, which held that the 2nd Amendment gives Americans the right to own guns for self-defense. He is also a gun owner.

But while sentencing Loughner in November, Burns questioned the need for high-capacity magazines like the one Loughner had in his Glock, and said he regretted how the Federal Assault Weapons Ban was allowed to lapse in 2004. On Thursday, reacting to last week’s mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., Burns publicly called for a new assault weapons ban “with some teeth this time,” in an op-ed published by The Los Angeles Times.

A conservative case for an assault weapons ban:

If we can't draw a sensible line on guns, we may as well call the American experiment in democracy a failure.

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Here we go again with Darrell Issa out there pushing the right-wing conspiracy theory started by Mike Vanderboegh, that the Fast and Furious debacle is really just a secret ploy to try to get more gun control laws enacted: GOP Oversight Chair Doubles Down On Wild Conspiracy Theory: Obama DOJ May Have Started Fast & Furious To Limit Access To Guns:

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) doubled down on a right wing conspiracy theory this morning, again suggesting that the failed “Fast and Furious” operation was a secret scheme by Democrats designed to promote stronger gun control regulation. But he also admitted that he had absolutely no evidence to back the theory and likely never would. [...]

Issa is more than happy to continue to promote the theory — started and peddled by Mike Vanderboegh, a man who once called for militias to break the windows of members of Congress because of the passage of the Affordable Care Act — even though even he concedes even he does not believe he will ever be able to produce any evidence of the allegations.

Transcript below the fold.

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