"What's wrong with these people?" Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough wondered this morning about this new NRA ad, in which a sneering narrator asks "Are the president's kids more important than yours? Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their schools?" before pointedly referring, in the style of Ernst Blofeld, to a certain Mr. Obama. Well, Joe, here's the thing: the NRA is the armed wing of a quasi-religious movement of self-obsessed paranoid racists whose gun fetishism is founded on pathological fear of minorities and an abiding belief in ongoing societal collapse, and this ad is a pretty accurate statement of its institutional thought process. So, I guess, what's wrong with these people is that they're idiots.

Let's rewind back to Dec. 21, 2012 — about four weeks ago, and exactly a week after Adam Lanza killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. On that day, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." He also proposed that armed guards be stationed at every school in the country to prevent mass shootings.

NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre's bizarre press conference managed to make the cover of the New York tabloids today and both papers didn't miss the opportunity to really dig in.

If you didn't bear witness to the most disastrous press conference in recent history today, courtesy of NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, here is the gist of the NRA's response to last week's Sandy Hook massacre: the NRA wants to put a volunteer force of armed guards in every school in America. They call this plan the "National School Shield," and they believe it will prevent more school shootings from happening. "The only way—the only way—to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved," said LaPierre, "and the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a good guy with a gun."

During NRA spokesman Wayne LaPierre's Friday-morning press conference, the organization's first since 27 people died a week ago at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn., my Twitter feed — filled with liberal writers and pundits — was lighting up in fascination and disgust. "Every journalist on Twitter thinks Lapierre is completely insane," Reuters' Felix Salmon wrote. The consensus was that LaPierre's remarks were unhinged and alienating; the Washington Post's Ezra Klein marveled at "how much damage LaPierre is doing to the NRA without even allowing questions." Even the few conservatives I follow agreed: "I'm not sure this presser was good in style a week after Newtown," wrote RedState's Erick Erickson.

The National Rifle Association today held its first press conference since last week's deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, and the takeaway was clear: We need more guns.

The NRA's news conference Friday morning had one unexpected visitor: a protestor with a big pink sign.

The NRA hasn't said a word since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary — until now. The nation's most powerful pro-gun organization has emerged with the official bullshit it would like to spoonfeed you in the wake of arguably the worst mass shooting in American history. Everyone got their bibs tucked in?

After the Sandy Hook Shootings, the NRA—America's most influential force for putting guns in the hands of everyone—went conspicuously silent. Now, after what has doubtless been a staggering amount of fretting by PR types, the NRA has released its first statement on the incident:

"Friday changed everything," proclaimed MSNBC's Joe Scarborough at the onset of a ten-minute monologue he delivered during this morning's Morning Joe — and that change began at home for the former congressman.

Here's the official NRA Twitter account's most recent tweet, sent six hours ago. For some reason, America's most infamous gun organization has fallen silent all of a sudden.

On tonight's Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert told tales from the weekend he spent with the NRA at their annual meeting. While Mitt Romney was a wee bit out of place, Newt Gingrich was right at home, especially when he theorized that the right to bear arms had been handed down by God and that it is his hope that everyone on the planet can be armed. One day, Newt, one day.

If you were looking for NRA president Wayne LaPierre's response to the Trayvon Martin case, you're not going to find it. At the annual NRA meeting, LaPierre said he would not comment "without a full understanding of the facts." He did, however, accuse the media of not caring about other violent crimes — presumably those not involving guns? And then he told us how he really felt.

On tonight's' Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert took a look at the fear on the right that President Obama will come for their guns if he is elected to a second term. What evidence do they have? Simply that he hasn't made any attempt to come for them yet. As Colbert put it, "no evidence is the only evidence I need."

The Obama administration picked a quiet late-summer day to finally remove acting ATF director Kenneth Melson over the botched "Fast and Furious" operation that ultimately put assault rifles into the hands of criminals along the border. Melson wasn't fired though — merely relocated to a new Justice Department job. This is a great "win" for the NRA!

Is your pediatrician trying to take away your gun? (Probably!) You should move to Florida, where a new law would prevent pediatricians from asking about guns in the home. Thanks, NRA, for telling doctors what they can, and can't, do.

If you're on the FBI's terrorist watch list, you can't get on a plane. You can't get 9/11 responder health benefits. But you can buy all the fucking guns your little jihadi heart desires—247 of you did last year, according to the FBI—because the NRA is out there protecting the Allah-given right of suspected terrorists to buy guns.

Just when you thought he was too busy to deal with anything else, especially something with annoying culture-war implications, Barack Obama went and published an op-ed in this past Sunday's Arizona Daily Star to start a conversation on gun reforms. That does not mean, as he anxiously rushed to note in his column, that he wants to take everyone's guns and repeal the Second Amendment. He just wants "commonsense" reforms, of some sort. Unfortunately, this political process starts by reaching out to the NRA, and guess what? The NRA does not give a fuck about Barack Obama.

Republican Iowa State Rep. Jeff Kaufmann, speaker pro tem of the Iowa State House, was caught joking on a hot mic that a proposal which would allow state residents to carry weapons in public without permission from a sheriff and without any training or a background check might better be called the "give-a-handgun-to-a-schizophrenic-bill."

The NRA has begun mobilizing its usual election-year lie campaign about Democrats wanting to ban all weapons. Today, the gun lobby's "Trigger the Vote" wing released this redneck-comedy video featuring Chuck Norris, an actor from the 1990s. It's not terrible!