A July 4 march encourages gun advocates to carry loaded rifles into Washington, DC and knowingly break the law. Although described as a nonviolent “act of civil obedience,” organizer Adam Kokesh implied a threat of violence if “the government chooses to make it violent.” He encourages participants to peacefully submit to law enforcers but underlines that point with, “We are truly saying in the SUBTLEST way possible that we would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.”

Since Friday, more than 2,000 people have RSVPed to the march to “put the government on notice.”

In a local news channel interview pointed out by Politico, Metropolitan Police Department Chief Cathy Lanier explained that this is an open disregard for DC law:

[W]hen you cross with firearms and you’re not in compliance with the law now you’re talking about a criminal offense and there’s going to be some action by police. Obviously there has been no permit filed by the organizer and we’ve not made contact with the organizer yet. But we will, and we’ll make sure they understand that if they want to pass through the District of Columbia with loaded firearms as long as they are in compliance with the firearms laws for transportation of firearms to the District, we’re all for it. But passing into the District of Columbia with firearms is a violation of the law and we’ll have to treat it as such.

Whether Lanier’s warning invigorates or extinguishes the protest remains unclear.

Kokesh’s plans, along with a series of other open carry protests, undermines arguments made by the National Rifle Association against gun violence prevention. The NRA claims that it is unfair of the government to strengthen background checks or ban assault rifles for law-abiding citizens. Yet this protest plans to purposely break the law.

That point is missed by Kokesh. Open carry is illegal in the District, but Kokesh wants to aim his message at the federal government for attempting modest background checks supported by gun owners and non-gun owners alike.

Hours before a Colorado Senate deadline, marijuana legalization opponents introduced a measure to repeal the newly passed ballot initiative to regulate marijuana like alcohol. The bill’s introduction Monday evening, after having become public just a few days earlier, prompted immediate reaction from the marijuana legalization community, and at 10 p.m., the bill’s sponsors backed down and took the bill off the table in the face of a filibuster threat and defeat in the House. From the Associated Press:

The last-minute maneuver infuriated marijuana legalization supporters, some of whom ran up several flights of stairs to testify against the measure when they got word it would be heard.

“You’re subverting the will of the voters,” argued Joe Megysy, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a major backer of last year’s pot measure.

Even House colleagues seemed taken aback by the late-night maneuver to ask voters again whether retail pot sales should be allowed.

“This has caught all of us a bit off guard,” said Rep. Dan Pabon, sponsor of a marijuana regulation measure in the House. He said the chances of the repeal measure getting the necessary two-thirds margin in House were “.001.”

The bill would have linked repeal to a tax measure that will go before the Colorado legislature this fall. If voters did not approve certain taxes on marijuana, then the repeal would go into effect. The sponsors said its intent was to pressure the marijuana industry to support the taxes, but it also would have pressured voters to choose between accepting taxes they might not support, or lose the ballot initiative they had previously supported. The ballot initiative garnered more votes than President Obama in November.

As the Colorado legislature completed its session, it also considered several other bills related to marijuana regulation. Although several were left in limbo, the legislature did pass a key measure that has failed numerous other times to set driving under the influence limits of 5 nanograms per milliliter. Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) has said he supports the measure. The House also passed a bipartisan resolution asking for direction from the federal government on how to proceed with regulating pot. Attorney General Eric Holder has still not announced any federal policy on the two state laws to legalize recreational marijuana.

Thanks to multiple petitions, the “ex-girlfriend” mannequin that bleeds when shot will no longer be available to purchase on Amazon.com. “Alexa,” or “the ex,” as she is marketed, was thought to be an April Fool’s Joke when first covered last month. In fact, the doll is a very real product encouraging men to seek fatal revenge against women.

The company that manufactures the target, Zombie Industries, also displayed a target resembling President Obama at the NRA convention last week. Zombie Industries has a line of 15 “zombie” targets, including one woman because, as the website says, “To discriminate against Women by not having them represented in our product selection would be just plain sexist.”

The website features a promotional video showing several men “busting up a zombie chick.” Towards the end, the camera zooms up on a man holding a handgun to the prone mannequin’s head. He pulls the trigger a couple more times after saying, “Dodge this.”

Watch it:

Testimonials from customers praised the mannequin for looking like “my bitch ex-wife” and “a girl I knew in High School.”

Considering the staggering number of women who are killed by exes, boyfriends, husbands, and stalkers each year, Amazon should never have hesitated in dropping the mannequin. Guns are the most common weapon used to kill women, and having a gun in the house makes domestic abusers 7 times more likely to kill their partners. Women aren’t the only ones impacted by this fatal pattern; between 2009 and 2012, 40 percent of mass shootings began with the shooter targeting his girlfriend, wife or ex.

The NRA, which promotes Zombie Industries as a vendor, tried to defend its campaign against universal background checks by claiming women need guns to protect themselves. Thanks to the gun lobby’s fight to maintain the loophole that allows domestic abusers and stalkers to buy guns without background checks, hundreds of real ex-girlfriends will continue to face the risk of being attacked by dangerous men.

The National Rifle Association (NRA)’s overtures to children have come under fire after its annual conference last week, which advertised weapons for children and advocated storing firearms in kids’ rooms just on the heels of the fatal shooting of a two year old by her five year old brother. A ThinkProgress review of the NRA children’s magazine, InSights, found another piece of disturbing advice: kids should build target ranges inside their homes.

The article, “BB, It’s Cold Outside,” ran in the January 2013 edition of InSights. The spread features a picture of a young-looking boy holding a BB gun next to a fireplace, and is addressed to children who are “shooting a real gun now” but can’t wait to practice until it’s warm enough outside to make firing one fun. The NRA article recommends that, instead, the child build a home BB gun range to keep up.

While the article does tell kids to follow standard firing range safety rules and ask adult permission before setting up the indoor range, here are some other tips it offers:

– “Eliminate ricochet with a proper backstop. You have no idea how bouncy a tiny metal ball can be until you hear one whizzing by your head.”

– “There are plenty of indoor range setups you can find on the internet.”

– “You don’t want people opening a door or looking in a window to see a BB gun pointing at them.”

– “While you’re thinking of cool stuff to use as targets, also keep in mind how you’re going to set them up in your range. Hanging targets work great, by the way.”

– “When you’re trying to improve accuracy, BB guns are the best. If you have a habit of flinching when pulling the trigger, BB guns will help you work that out.”

The online edition of the article links to a previous InSights feature article, which helpfully reminds young children that “The first and most important thing to remember is that with air guns, any projectile that does not hit a proper pellet stop has a very high possibility of a ricochet or bounce back. This is particularly true with a BB gun using round steel projectiles.”

Though BB guns are powered by air rather than gunpowder, they’re still very dangerous. A 2009 study in the journal Pediatrics found that BB guns and similar weapons send roughly 22,000 Americans to the emergency room each year, the overwhelming majority of whom are children aged 5-14. These injuries have, in some cases, been fatal. The American Association of Pediatrics has concluded that these guns “are weapons and should never be characterized as toys,” partly because “the range of muzzle velocities for nonpowder guns overlaps velocities reached by traditional firearms.”

It’s also questionable whether young children can be trusted to accurately carry out all of the NRA’s safety instructions. Not only are young children notoriously clumsy and irresponsible, but it’s unclear whether, say, an eight year old is capable of understanding the difference in lethality and risk between BB guns and real firearms. The Savage Arms .22 “Rascal” .22 rifles, which are frequently advertised in InSights under the banner “One Shot! One Thrill!,” don’t look all that different from some BB gun models.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) took a bath in the polls after she voted against expanding background checks for gun purchases — her approval rating dropped 15 points in the immediate aftermath of her vote. Moreover, she is currently being hit by an ad pointing out that she opposed expanding background checks despite the fact that 89 percent of the state support comprehensive checks. In reaction to this ad, the National Rifle Association responded with an unusual tactic — trying to trick voters into thinking she actually supports background checks. Watch it:

The ad’s core claim is that “Kelly Ayotte voted for a bipartisan plan to make background checks more effective.” In reality, Ayotte opposed the bipartisan background checks plan co-sponsored by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA). What she voted for instead was a plan by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) that would actually weaken gun laws by making it easier to buy and transport guns across state lines. Gun sales in states with lax gun laws are a common method of evading strict state and local laws, and are a major driver of gun violence in cities such as Chicago. So the proposal Ayotte supported could make gun violence worse.

In addition to making it easier for gun purchasers to evade state law, the Grassley/Cruz proposal includes provisions that encourage states to share mental health records with the existing federal background checks system — a solution that does nothing to prevent people who want to evade this system from taking advantage of holes in the current system which allow people to buy guns with no background check at all. Additionally, the proposal funds additional prosecutions of felons who seek to buy guns — a solution that also does nothing to prevent felons who seek to buy guns from evading detection altogether by taking advantage of holes in the background check system.

So the plan that Ayotte supported would do little, if anything, to “make background checks more effective,” as the NRA claims. Nevertheless, it is significant that the NRA decided that it should run this particular ad in the first plan. The NRA’s ad, with its effort into misleading voters into thinking Ayotte is more supportive of gun regulation than she actually is, is a tacit admission that the NRA’s sweeping opposition to expanding background checks will not play with voters.

Kansas high school student Wesley Teague is the president of Heights High’s senior class and a varsity track athlete. He was also suspended for the rest of the school year and banned from most graduation activities, including a speaking opportunity at a senior breakfast and convocation ceremony Friday, for tweets joking about his high school’s sports program.

On Thursday, Teague tweeted “‘Heights U’ is equivalent to WSU’s football team.” “Heights U” refers to a term some in the school community use to express pride in their sports teams. “WSU” refers to Wichita State University, which has not had a football team since the 1980s. He followed up this tweet with quips about Heights sports teams’ trouble winning games, and with comments about how he feels comfortable making these comments because he is about to graduate.

In a letter to Teague and his parents explaining the decision to suspend the senior class president, the school claimed Teague “acted to incite a disturbance” and that he “posted some very inappropriate tweets about the Heights athletic teams, aggressively disrespecting many athletes [...] After reading the tweets and taking statements from other students it was found that Wesley acted to incite the majority of our Heights athletes.” A school spokesperson later claimed that “there was a negative reaction from many students, including threats of fights in the school.”

In a conversation with ThinkProgress, Teague flatly denied that his comments were intended to be disruptive and said both his peers and the administration over-reacted to his routine use of social media:

“The school labeled it as cyberbullying, saying I tried to incite the students and I caused a disruption, but at the same time what the students were saying back to me about the comment was actually the cyberbullying [...] I was just like, “Wow, it’s my opinion, and freedom of speech,” but I’m not mad at the kids who were talking trash on me, I’m upset that my school and our school district won’t let me participate in my senior activities that I’ve waited four years to take part in.”

As a matter of First Amendment law, a school may target student speech if school officials “reasonably conclude that it will ‘materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school.’” Even if Teague’s tweets actually did result in sufficient disruptiveness to permit the school to take action, however, it hardly follows that suspending Teague was the appropriate response.

For his part, Teague is trying to find peace with the school’s actions. “I’m trying to let it go,” he told ThinkProgress. “If the school wants to suspend me because of my opinion, I honestly don’t want to go there anymore.”

Pennsylvania state Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R) wants to rig the Electoral College to put a Republican in the White House, and he convinced half of the GOP’s 26 member state senate caucus to co-sponsor a bill that attempts to do so. Under Pileggi’s election-rigging plan, the blue state of Pennsylvania would give many of its electoral votes to the Republican Party’s presidential candidate — Mitt Romney would have won 8 of the state’s 20 electors under this plan — while red states will continue to allocate all of their electoral votes to the Republican candidate as well.

At least one of Pileggi’s fellow Republicans, however, does not support this plan to rig future elections. In video of a recent town hall meeting first posted by People for the American Way, state Sen. Chuck McIlhinney (R-PA) comes out against the bill:

QUESTION: I just had a question about a bill that Senator Pileggi had, that we have been hearing a lot in the press about, that changes the Electoral College votes. What is your stance on that? What is your position on that and why?

MCILHINNEY: The Electoral College — what they are trying to say is that you have a proportionate amount of votes you need, or we have 20 electoral college votes and they should be based upon a proportionate of the number of people who voted in Pennsylvania. Now, under that system, I could never see a Presidential candidate ever getting more than 11 to 9, no matter who it is. Because I am never going to see a candidate win 75% of the vote in Pennsylvania. So you could never even get more than 11 let alone 20. Which makes no sense to me whatsoever. . . . It will force us into a state that will only have two electoral college votes depending on which way you go with it. So, I won’t support it. I don’t think it’s gonna come up.

But that’s the logic is to say that every vote should count. So, even if your candidate lost, you’re still gaining him some Electoral College votes in that Electoral College. But it really was poorly thought out, if I can say that. I respect Senator Pileggi a lot but I wouldn’t support it.

McIlhinney’s statement is good news for American democracy, but it is not enough in and of itself to stop Pennsylvania Republicans from moving forward with their election-rigging plan. Currently, Republicans control 27 of 50 seats in the state senate plus the lieutenant governorship, so a total of three Republicans must oppose rigging the Electoral College in order to kill Pileggi’s plan.

The Louisiana Supreme Court has affirmed a lower court judgment that the state’s school voucher program is unconstitutional because of program funding that diverts money for public schools into the private voucher system. The Times-Picayune reports:

Act 2, part of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s 2012 package of education reforms, diverts money from each student’s per-pupil allocation to cover the cost of private or parochial school tuition. The act authorizes both the Louisiana Scholarship Program and the new Course Choice program.

The vote was 6-1, with Justice Greg Guidry dissenting. The plaintiffs in the case include the Louisiana Association of Educators, the Louisiana Federation of Teachers and the Louisiana School Boards Association.

The ruling states that the per-pupil allocation, called the minimum foundation program or MFP, must go to public schools. Justice John Weimer writes, “The state funds approved through the unique MFP process cannot be diverted to nonpublic schools or other nonpublic course providers according to the clear, specific and unambiguous language of the constitution.”

Furthermore, the court found that the instrument Jindal used to pass the MFP for the 2012-13 school year violated proper procedure and was therefore void from the start.

Instead of passing a law, the Legislature appropriated the MFP funds by passing a resolution, SCR 99. However, that resolution “was intended to have the effect of law,” according to the court, and it was filed after the deadline for introducing new bills, rendering it invalid. This part of the Supreme Court decision overturns the judgment made in Baton Rouge district court in November.

Within hours of the decision, Jindal responded with a statement saying he would find another way to fund a voucher program “through the budget,” although it is not clear how he will do so without violating the holding, unless he passes a voucher law.

While this ruling made clear that it is not weighing in on the merits of the program, a federal district court recently suspended the voucher program in one district over concerns that it was interfering with desegregation. Several recent studies have found that voucher programs are an ineffective way to improve student performance, draining funds and diversity from public programs, without improving the performance of even those attending the voucher schools.