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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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Conservative radio host Glenn Beck responded to a shooting at Houston's largest airport on Thursday by suggesting that it had been a plot to "set up" gun owners like the the burning of German's parliament -- or Reichstag -- in 1933, which Nazis exploited as a pretext to suspend constitutional rights.

According to CBS News, a man named Carnell Moore fired a pistol into the ceiling of Terminal B at Bush International Airport and was shot by a federal agent. At the same time, Carnell also shot himself. A fully-loaded, black Smith & Wesson AR-15 was found in a suitcase next to where he was sitting.

Messages on social media indicated that Carnell had planned a mass shooting, but a suicide note found on the body suggested that he changed his mind.

But because the shooting happened as members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) were arriving in Houston for its annual convention, Beck saw a conspiracy behind Carnell's actions.

"The idea that this is happening at the airport with the NRA is too much to believe," Beck told a studio audience in Houston. "If I were a journalist -- let me correct that -- if I were an honest journalist, I would be looking for these connections. Look for the connections of who this man is and any connection he might have to the uber-Left."

"I believe this man could fall into the category of somebody who has lost his job, is depressed, etc., etc. Somebody comes in off to the side, winds him up, says, 'Oh, you should make a statement, you should make a statement.' I believe that's probably -- I shouldn't say that -- I believe it is a very good chance that is what happened."

But Beck speculated that the man realized that "that's not who I am" and decided not to go through with the mass killing.

"If I were an honest journalist, I'd find out where these guns came from -- were they purchased or were they illegal?" he continued. "If there were illegal, oh, I can guarantee you, this is a set up. Someone knows history. I do."

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Oklahoma Rep. Frank Lucas (R) recently told a conservative radio show that President Barack Obama's administration may be engaged in a "conspiracy" to purchase all available ammunition as a form of gun control.

Last week, Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s National Security Subcommittee caved to conspiracies theories in the conservative media and held a hearing about whether the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was buying a billion rounds of ammunition to use against the American people.

In an interview with NewsMax host Steve Malzberg on Monday, Lucas explained that he had joined with Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) to introduce a bill that would limit the amount of ammunition the federal government can buy.

"What do you think that they think they need this for?" Malzberg wondered.

"You know, it's hard to see into the mind of an Obama-appointed official," Lucas opined. "But this is the administration that's super gun control, that really, really, really doesn't trust people with firearms and obviously they don't trust people with ammunition."

"Is this a conspiracy to buy up all the bullets so they're not available to us? I don't know," he added. "But I suspect, Steve, it's a combination of these big purchases by the non-Defense Department government agencies like Homeland Security and a near-panic buying among my constituents, who are afraid that in some gun control bill there were be a limitation on on their ability to buy ammunition. Or the president will do something by executive order."

Although conspiracies theories about government ammunition purchases have been thoroughly debunked, Republican lawmakers have continued to let conservative sites like Alex Jones' Infowars, Glenn Beck's The Blaze and The Drudge Report drive their agenda.

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Fox did not renew Glenn Beck's contract, but that hasn't stopped the network from continuing to bring him on the air as an occasional guest. Apparently they still like using him to rile up the wingnuts, even if they don't want him on every night.

This Thursday, Bill-O did just that: Fox's O'Reilly Gives Glenn Beck Airtime To Peddle His Boston Bombing Conspiracy Theory .

Media Matters has more on the whole ugly mess here: Glenn Beck Is Undeterred By Reality On Saudi Nationals And The Boston Bombings.

Beck told O'Reilly that he's got "multiple sources" in the Obama administration who were providing him with documents, and now there's some grand cover up going on. Yeah, when pigs fly Glenn.

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Rep. John Tierney (D-MA), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's National Security Subcommittee, slammed Republicans on Thursday for conducting a hearing that he said was driven by Internet conspiracy theories suggesting that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was buying a billion rounds of ammunition to use against the American people.

In his opening statement on Thursday, subcommittee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) cited "recent news reports" about the "federal government's massive procurement of ammunition."

"The question is, what is an appropriate use of this ammunition, where is it stored, how much are they paying for it and what are they doing with it?" the Utah Republican asked.

Although Chaffetz mentioned media outlets like The Associated Press and USA Today, much of the hype about DHS ammunition purchases have been driven by conservative websites like Alex Jones' Infowars and Glenn Beck's The Blaze. And the theories have been kept alive by the Fox News Channel, the Fox Business Network and even televangelist Pat Robertson.

"To the extent that we're responding to conspiracy theories or whatever, I think we're really wasting everybody's time on that," Tierney said in his opening statement. "It might have been predictable that Sarah Palin would have taken opportunity to feed these conspiracy theories with statements that the government was preparing for civil unrest, but it was a little more disturbing that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) would seize the opportunity to accuse the government cornering the market on ammunition to drive up prices."

"Unsubstantiated false conspiracy theories have no place in this committee room -- hopefully," he continued. "Federal ammunition purchases are a fraction of the total ammunition market and they've been decreasing in recent years. Even the National Rifle Association distances itself from these conspiracy theories."

From Sam Seder's the Majority Report, Glenn Beck is using the Boston bombing attack to scare the rubes who still listen to and watch his shows into buying gold from his sponsors.

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Conservative radio host Glenn Beck on Monday linked an MSNBC promotional advertisement about public education to conspiracy theories that contend the United Nations plans to use mind control to establish a communist dictatorship and that the Obama administration is using school testing standards for "leftist indoctrination."

Last week, conservative websites like Newsbusters and the Daily Caller cited MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry's promo about the need for public education as evidence that liberals intended to usurp parental sovereignty.

"We have never invested as much in public education as we should have, because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children," Harris-Perry says in the spot. "So part of it is, we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it’s everybody’s responsibility, and not just the household’s, then we start making better investments."

On Monday, The Daily Caller's Jim Treacher featured the video with the headline, "MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry wants your children." And the Media Research Center's snarky headline borrowed a popular Internet meme: "Shorter Melissa Harris-Perry: All Your Kids Are Belong to Us."

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Leave it to Glenn Beck to turn Rep. Michele Bachmann's ethics investigation for improper use of her PAC donations into a conspiracy theory that the U.S. government has secretly been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Beck: Bachmann Ethics Investigation Is a Muslim Brotherhood Plot:

As Beck sees it, Bachmann has been a target of the Brotherhood for a long time because she has been "uber clear" about the threat posed by the organization and so, in retaliation, the State Department has been relocating hundreds of Muslim Somali refugees into her congressional district. And for daring to ask why this was happening, says Beck, "now she's under investigation":

[Editor's note: Somalis have been settling in the U.S. since the 1920s. The Twin Cities is home to the largest Somali community in America, and it's been that way long before Michelle Bachmann started her wacko conspiracy theories. Nice try, Beckster.]

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Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and freshman state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione have a plan to create a "Fort Knox of Texas" so that the state can start hoarding gold.

Giovanni has filed a bill to establish a Texas Bullion Depository to store the $1 billion worth of gold bars that are owned by University of Texas Investment Management Co. (UTIMCO), which are currently being housed by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Speaking to conservative radio host Glenn Beck on Tuesday, Perry said that lawmakers were in the process of "bringing gold that belongs to the state of Texas back into the state." Beck has been a longtime paid spokesperson for the precious metal seller Goldline, which agreed to refund up to $4.5 million to former customers last year after being sued for marking up gold more than 50 percent.

"If we own it, I will suggest to you that that's not someone else's determination whether we can take possession of it back or not," Perry told Beck.

Former Rep. Ron Paul on Thursday explained to The Texas Tribune that the gold would be safer in the hands of Texans.

"If you think gold is a hedge, or a protection, you always want it as close to the individual and the entity as possible," Paul said. "Texas is better served if it knows exactly where the gold is rather than depending on the security of the Federal Reserve."

For his part, Capriglione said that he had gotten the idea while attending a tea party rally with Perry in Tarrant County earlier this year.

"Something on the scorecards of a lot of these businesses in deciding whether they want to come to Texas is stability and gold as being one of those items," Capriglione insisted. "I think it's been in his consciousness for a while in trying to get some sort of depository in the state of Texas."

"We don't want just the certificates. We want our gold. And if you're the state of Texas, you should be able to get your gold."

Tangent Capital Partners senior managing director Jim Rickards speculated to Yahoo Finance on Thursday that creating a "Fort Knox of Texas" could be a step in Texas creating its own currency and eventually moving to secede.

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Under the category of "Doh! We knew that," a former FBI profiler on Sunday warned that some gun advocates were making a mistake by rushing to blame the December mass shooting of 20 children in Connecticut on violent video games.

Following a CBS News report that investigators had found a "trove" of video games in the home of Newtown shooter Adam Lanza, conservatives like Glenn Beck jumped to the conclusion that the games had been a "gateway drug" to the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

But during a panel discussion on Sunday, former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole said evidence did not support that theory.

"It's my experience that video games do not cause violence," O'Toole told CBS News. "However, it is one of the risk variables when we do a threat assessment for the risk to act out violently."

"It's important that I point out that as a threat assessment and as a former FBI profiler, we don't see these as the cause violence," she added. "We see them as sources of fueling ideation that's already there."

Texas A&M International University psychology professor Christopher Ferguson pointed out that youth violence had recently declined to the lowest level in 40 years at a time when video games had become more violent.

"I think we have to put this discussion, to some extent, in historical perspective," Ferguson explained. "And when new media come out that they tend to go through a period of what we call moral panic, in which they are blamed for all manner of societal ills. And probably the best example of this was from the 1950s, when we had Congress and psychiatrists who were claiming that comic books were responsible for not only juvenile delinquency, but homosexuality."

"We're in a mode of worry about -- or panicking about this type of media. We may do some putting the cart before the horse, and we may see some people sort of starting with a conclusion and trying to assemble data in a very selective way to try to support that conclusion."

A 2002 study published by the U.S. Secret Service found that only 12 percent of perpetrators of school violence had an interest in violent video games. But 37 percent “exhibited an interest in violence in their own writings, such as poems, essays or journal entries.”