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MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell went after the NRA's Wayne LaPierre after he attempted to exploit the Boston Marathon bombings with his claim that more of the city's residents would have liked to have had a gun while the manhunt for the suspects was going on.

Cops–not NRA’s armed citizenry–stopped terrorists in Boston:

“How many Bostonians wished they had a gun two weeks ago?” National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre asked an audience Saturday at the gun lobbying group’s annual convention in Houston, Texas. LaPierre argued more guns in the hands of Bostonians would have helped in the city-wide manhunt for the marathon bombing suspects and protect residents.

O’Donnell said that comment was “spoken like a man who knows nothing about Boston.” The Last Word host said guns could not have stopped the tragedy that unfolded following the deadly attack.

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The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took his audience through the good, the bad and the crazy that was the NRA's 2013 National Convention over the weekend. After pointing out that it looked a whole lot like a recycled CPAC convention with the same lineup of guests complaining about the same set of grievances, Stewart noted that they did eventually get around to the fearmongering and guns.

After showing some of Wayne LaPierre's "simple message" about how the only one that can stop a "bad guy with a gun" is a "good guy with a gun," Stewart pointed out that the message wasn't quite so simple at the convention this year, since the lot of them didn't seem to know just who the bad guys or good guys are, or what the definition of democracy and tyranny are for that matter.

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The NRA's National School Shield Task Force chair, Asa Hutchinson may have finally conceded, after being badgered by Fox host Chris Wallace that he might be willing to go along with more background checks on gun sales at gun shows or over the Internet, but he was still being just as unreasonable as his cohort when it came to doing the checks on other types of private sales.

Take the word gun every time it's used here and replace it with the word car in Hutchinson's response.

WALLACE: Even if the NRA is right and we have had Wayne LaPierre on the show and he says, look, if a bad guy wants a gun, he's going to find a way to get a gun. The fact is 1.9 million sales, as I say, have been blocked. Why not make it as hard as possible for people to get their hands on a gun who have this history of either a criminal record or mental illness?

HUTCHINSON: Well, if you take those statistics at face value then the current system in place has been effective in blocking people who are not entitled to obtain a firearm from getting one. So, that's effective. Now, the question is, do you want to expand that system from where it is right now.

And I think in general concept, Americans, everybody would like to see effective background checks so that criminals do not have access to firearms.

But as a practical matter -- and I read the bill last night, if you are a farmer, 30 miles from town and you want to transfer a shotgun to a neighbor, you've got to go 30 miles into town, find the federal licensed firearm dealer, fill out the paperwork, pay the fee, have the background check and then you have a responsibility to keep those records for inspection by the government and that's a huge burden on citizens.

So, my look at that is, I don't know whether that's going to pass or not, but it's not going to address the problem of safety in schools. I'm not a spokesman for the NRA on this topic. I'm expressing my views but I want to look at things that work and keep children safe.

Yeah, what a terrible "burden" to keep from selling a gun to someone who shouldn't have one. I wonder what else he thinks those farmers would refuse to do if it required them driving more than 30 miles?

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Democratic Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy on Sunday lashed out at National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO Wayne LaPierre and other gun control opponents as "clowns at the circus" who were just trying to sell more guns.

After Connecticut responded to the December mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School by enacting some of the toughest gun laws in the nation last week, LaPierre had appeared on Fox News to say that the new measures make "law books thicker for the law-abiding people."

"From the very start, my thought has been about how little this had to do with keeping kids safe and how much it has to do with this decades-long agenda against firearms that some in the political class and the media have had," the NRA chief opined.

On Sunday, CNN host Candy Crowley asked Malloy if LaPierre had been correct that the Connecticut laws had made it harder for law-abiding citizens to arm themselves.

"Wayne reminds me of the clowns at the circus," Malloy quipped. "They get the most attention and that's what he's paid to do. But the reality is, is that the gun that was used to kill 26 people on Dec. 14 was legally purchased in these state of Connecticut, even though we had an assault weapons ban. But there were loopholes in it that you could drive a truck through."

"I mean, this guy is so out of whack, it's unbelievable. Ninety-two percent of the American people want universal background checks," the governor added. "Candy, I don't want to tell you your business, but bring them back to reality."

"What this is about is the ability of the gun industry to sell as many guns to as many people as possible, even if they're deranged, even if they're mentally ill, even if they have a criminal background. They don't care, they want to sell guns."

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The chairman of the National Rifle Association-funded National School Shield Task Force on Sunday shrugged off traditional talking points used by pro-gun lobbyists and insisted that requiring background checks at gun shows "would seem appropriate."

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday asked Asa Hutchinson if he could support background checks for all commercial sales, including closing loopholes on Internet and gun show sales.

"From my view, if you go to a gun show and you buy a firearm from a licensed dealer and you have the background check you also go out to somebody's vehicle and you get a firearm there and you purchase it and you don't have the check, there's some inconsistency there," Hutchinson explained. "And certainly from my personal standpoint, that's a fair debate. And again, Americans would like to see that."

"You're saying you would support expanding the background check to include non-dealer sales gun shows and also, for instance, sales on the Internet?" Wallace pressed.

"I can't speak to all of those because it's all in the fine print," Hutchinson replied. "You have to look at the language. I would look certainly at the gun shows and the sales that surround that in that environment. If we can make sure there's a comprehensive check and we keep criminals from obtaining guns in that environment then those checks would seem appropriate."

As late as last month, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre said that his organization opposed background checks at gun because they were a "dishonest premise" that only acted as a "speed bump for the law abiding."

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NBC host David Gregory on Sunday confronted National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre for "thwarting the will" of the public by opposing universal background checks while a vast majority of the public supports them.

Following an interview where New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that he planned to use part of his personal fortune to defeat candidates who oppose gun control, Gregory asked LaPierre if he was "preparing to arm politically people" support gun rights?

"We have people sending us five, 10, 15 dollar checks, saying, 'Stand up to this guy that says we can only have three bullets,'" the NRA chief explained. "Stand up to this guy that says ridiculous things like the NRA wants firearms with nukes on them. I mean, it's insane the stuff he says."

"Ninety percent of people want background checks," Gregory pointed out. "Among people who own guns, 85 percent support [background checks]. Are you thwarting the will of the American people by standing in opposition to universal background checks?"

"No, not at all," LaPierre insisted. "Because here's the thing, the whole thing -- universal checks -- is a dishonest premise. There's not a bill on the Hill that provide a universal checks, criminals aren't going to be checked, they're not going to do this. The shooters in Tucson, in Aurora, in Newtown -- they're not going to be checked, they're unrecognizable."

The pro-gun lobbyist suggested that the NRA would even oppose the current background check system if Congress tried to pass it again today because "it's a speed bump for the law abiding."

"It slows down the law abiding and does nothing to anybody else," he insisted.

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Here's your Congress at work, still doing the bidding of the NRA and Wayne LaPierre when they hope no one is paying attention. As Zack Beauchamp at Think Progress noted, you'd think that after the tragic shooting at Newtown any new gun regulations would tighten regulations and make it harder for criminals to attain them, but sadly, just the opposite is true.

The First Federal Gun Laws To Pass Since Newtown Are All NRA Approved:

Six gun provisions were passed as riders attached to the resolution funding the government through September on Thursday. While all six had been federal law since 2004, each was approved by Congress on a year-to-year basis only. Now, four of the provisions are permanent. According to National Public Radio‘s Tamara Keith, the NRA “is the driving force behind these provisions.” Here they are:

1) Limit enforcement tools against crooked dealers. One rider would prevent Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) agents from shutting down gun stores due to “due to a lack of business activity,” arguably a sign of criminal sales.

2) Shield gun dealers who “lose” their guns. This legislation precludes any federal law that requires gun retailers to count their guns and submit the results as a mechanism of determining whether any weapons have been lost or stolen.

3) Interfere with ATF gun trace reports. The ATF is now mandated to include, in any reports concerning its tracing of guns back to crime, that trace data “cannot be used to draw broad conclusions about firearms-related crime.” Academic work on guns has used trace data to firmly establish that several firearm regulations effectively prevent the spread of guns to criminal.

4) Expand the class of protected guns. According to Roll Call‘s John Gramlich, the fourth permanent law would “place a broad definition of antique guns and ammunition that may be imported into the United States.”

As Martin Bashir pointed out in his rant above, the NRA's Wayne LaPierre might be crazy, but he's crazy like a Fox when it comes to the success of his lobbying efforts.

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A school district in New York has put a program to put armed officers in schools on hold after a policeman's handgun went off at Highland High School.

At a Wednesday meeting with parents, Highland Central School District and police officials explained that Officer Sean McCutcheon had been suspended after his Glock .45-caliber pistol “accidentally discharged” in a school hallway at around 1:38 p.m. on Tuesday.

Lloyd Police Department Lt. James Janso said that a suspension was standard procedure while the incident was under investigation. Officials offered no further explanation as to why the gun discharged.

Some parents at the school board meeting questioned whether having armed guards in schools was worth the risk.

"What if a kid had been killed?" 43-year-old parent Mark Wallen asked. "We got lucky this time and that’s purely what it is."

Following the December mass shooting of 20 elementary school children in Connecticut, McCutcheon was assigned as a school resource officer for the Highland Central School District. As the district's only school resource officer, he rotated between three buildings.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has insisted that putting more armed guards in schools is the only way to curb violence.

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre said in December as he called on Congress "to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school."

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After attacking the media for their "anti-gun agenda" and Slate Magazine for keeping a running tally of the number of people who have been killed by firearms since the Newtown massacre, Stephen Colbert opined over the fact that all of this anti-gun information has had an affect, with 93 percent of Americans now favoring background checks for all gun buyers.

"Luckily," Colbert noted, "we can fight this negative reporting about guns." He elaborated during his Word segment this Monday evening.

COLBERT: Folks, this isn't the first time our Second Amendment rights have been threatened by facts. Back in 1993, the jackbooted statisticians at the Centers for Disease Control published a study of guns in households. Now, according to the study, not only were guns ineffective in home protection, but “people who keep guns in their homes appear to be at greater risk of homicide... than people who do not.”

Well sure, with a gun in the house, my family is less safe, but isn't that a small price to pay for my family's safety? [...] Folks, think about it. If this kind of information fell into the wrong hands, who knows how much damage it could have done, but luckily the NRA stepped up to make sure it would never happen again.

(You can read more on that here: What Researchers Learned About Gun Violence Before Congress Killed Funding.)

Colbert was terribly upset that the NRA's efforts are now being undone by President Obama, who signed an executive order which lifted the ban on the research, although it's not clear where they'll get funding for that.

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Conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough took the "both sides do it" argument to the limit on Thursday when he declared that Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman was "as extreme" as National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre.

During his Morning Joe broadcast, Scarborough blasted LaPierre's recent "Stand and Fight" op-ed responding to President Barack Obama's call for gun control during the State of the Union address for being "laced with racial overtones."

"After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia," LaPierre wrote. "Looters ran wild in south Brooklyn."

"Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Riots. Terrorists. Gangs. Lone criminals. These are perils we are sure to face—not just maybe. It’s not paranoia to buy a gun. It’s survival. It’s responsible behavior, and it’s time we encourage law-abiding Americans to do just that," he continued. "We, the American people, clearly see the daunting forces we will undoubtedly face: terrorists, crime, drug gangs, the possibility of Euro-style debt riots, civil unrest or natural disaster."

Scarborough, however, argued that LaPierre had essentially undercut "everything Republicans are now trying to do to make up for their 27 percent in the election with Hispanics."

"A racially tinged, very suggestive op-ed by Wayne LaPierre, who Republicans are blindly following around," the MSNBC host added. "The extremism of Wayne LaPiere is so frightening."

At some point during the course of the show, Scarborough decided to provoke Twitter by comparing LaPierre to Krugman.

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