NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland — An NRA panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference this past weekend mocked a congresswoman whose husband was murdered in a 1993 mass-shooting, claiming she has “no idea what [she's] talking about” when it comes to gun control laws.

Twenty years ago, McCarthy’s husband Dennis was one of the six people who died in a shooting rampage on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train. The shooter, Colin Ferguson, targeted people at random, carrying a handgun and high-capacity magazines. McCarthy’s son Kevin was also shot and severely injured in the spree. The tragedy prompted McCarthy to become an outspoken advocate for stronger gun laws and eventually win a seat in Congress three years later.

Yet McCarthy’s personal experience with the horrors of gun violence did not stop the NRA from disparaging her understanding of the issues surrounding firearms. NRA Organizer Colton Kerrigan played a video of the New York congresswoman and made fun of her for not knowing what a barrel shroud is, using the episode to dismiss her entire push for stronger gun laws. She has “no idea what [she's] writing, never shot a gun before, and yet [she's] going to tell you what you should and should not own to make everybody else safer.”

KERRIGAN: These lawmakers who write these laws have no idea what they’re talking about. They’ve never shot a firearm before, they couldn’t tell you what a barrel shroud is. They couldn’t tell you what a mount is for a bayonet. They probably couldn’t tell you what a flash suppressor is. Yet these are the people who are writing the laws saying we need to ban these certain types of firearms. [...] The underlying theme of all of this is, at the end of the day, the lawmakers have no idea what they’re writing, never shot a gun before, and yet they’re going to tell you what you should and should not own to make everybody else safer, yet they couldn’t tell you the difference between the butt or the barrel of a gun.

Watch it (excuse the technical malfunction at 1:18):

The NRA is mocking McCarthy for her support of a perfectly reasonable law. Barrel shrouds can be used to facilitate faster and more accurate fire into crowds of people — that is, precisely the sort of assault that claimed McCarthy’s husband’s life. Picking out features like barrel shrouds in assault weapon bans is an effective proxy mechanism for defining the most dangerous weapons currently being sold.

Moreover, to say that a woman who personally knows the tragic impact firearms but has “never shot a gun before” can’t have a valid perspective on gun laws is ludicrous. Her experience with gun violence is no less (and arguably much more) relevant to debates about gun laws than that of gun aficionados. Why does the mere fact of growing up going to a shooting range mean that one’s opinion should be given more weight than that of a woman whose husband was gunned down?

Every year at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, dozens of organizations big and small rent tables in an exhibition hall to dole out pens, stickers, and brochures promoting everything from homophobia to global warming denialism.

But alongside the National Organization for Marriage and the NRA are a cavalcade of fringe organizations warning of the dangers posed by the United Nations, secularism and foreign languages. Here are five of the craziest views advanced by their literature:

1. Marxists Control The Catholic Church. Fringe fundamentalist Cliff Kincaid’s organization America’s Survival is handing out a brochure warning Roman Catholics that the church “has been compromised philosophically — not only by infiltrators from the homosexual movement and Marxists. but by adherents of the so-called ‘New Age’ philosophy.” So vast is the communist infiltration within the Catholic Church, one “Catholic insider” told the organization that the bishops “made a deal with the devil to get Obamacare passed.”

2. The UN Will Take One-Quarter Of America’s Land. The American Jobs Alliance, a conservative business advocacy group, is handing out hundreds of fliers warning attendees of the dangers posed by the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an undeniably controversial free trade agreement that the United States is currently negotiating with a handful of South Pacific nations. Instead of reasoned criticism however, AJA sounds the alarm over Sharia Law, and claims that the Partnership “cedes 1/4 of U.S. to Foreign Control. A quarter of the entire U.S. land area will fall under UN court jurisdiction.”

3. Marriage Equality Must Be Opposed. Reason #8 in the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Prosperity’s “10 Reasons Why Homosexual ‘Marriage’ is Harmful and Must to Opposed” brochure: “It Imposes its Acceptance on all Society.” One example of the horrors of acceptance? “Rental property owners will have to agree to accept same-sex couples as tenants.” 10 reasons weren’t enough for the Ruth Institute, who have a brochure of their own with “77 Non-Religious Reasons to Support Man/Woman Marriage.”

4. George Soros Controls Everything. In another brochure published by Cliff Kincaid’s America’s Survival organization, author Zubi Diamond proclaims that President Obama “hates America just like his master George Soros.” Racially questionable language aside, Diamond’s obsession with French financier George Soros spills over to the rest of the brochure, going so far as to claim that former Fox News firebrand Glenn Beck was fired from the network for “exposing George Soros.”

5. Puerto Rico’s Statehood Referendum Was Rigged. ProEnglish’s singular mission — to promote English as country’s official language and wage war on any attempts to provide civic services in Spanish or any other foreign language — is laid forth in an 8 page newsletter on display at CPAC. Such articles include “Canada’s Struggles with Bilingualism Continue,” “ProEnglish Ally Rep. Steve King Re-Elected,” and cover story “Rigged Vote in Puerto Rico Produces Artificial Majority for Statehood.”

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland — Nearly three years ago, future Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) gave a series of interviews where he explained his opposition to federal bans on private race and gender discrimination. In short, Paul believes that “private ownership” should trump civil rights, and thus business owners should be free to discriminate.

Paul now appears to have company in his opposition to civil rights. In an exclusive interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, Broun told ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes that a federal law protecting LGBT Americans from employment discrimination is unconstitutional. And he strongly suggested that all federal employment laws violate the Constitution:

KEYES: One of the issues that the Senate’s now looking at is the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, whether or not it should be illegal for a company to be able to fire someone for being gay. Do you have a sense on where you stand on an issue like that?

BROUN: I believe that the federal government should be doing what the Constitution says it should be doing. Following what our founding fathers meant for us to do. These issues should be dealt with on the state basis. When we inject the federal government with things it should not be doing, we create this huge federal government that is spending money it should not be spending. [...]

KEYES: Do you think the federal government should even have a role in anti-discrimination laws at all, at least as it pertains to employment?

BROUN: I think the federal government should be doing only what the Constitution says it should be. We don’t have authority under the federal Constitution to have a big federal criminal justice system. I want to see us to shrink the federal criminal justice system, let the states prosecute these types of laws. We’re spending money we shouldn’t be.

At this point, Keyes asked Broun to clarify whether his statement that anti-discrimination issues “should be dealt with on the state basis” also applies to race and gender discrimination, but a staffer accompanying Broun insistently cut off the interview.

Listen:

There are a number of factual errors in Broun’s answer. Typically civil rights suits are civil, not criminal, matters, for example, so declaring federal civil rights laws unconstitutional would do very little to “shrink the federal criminal justice system.”

Most importantly, his reading of the Constitution flat wrong. The Constitution gives Congress broad authority to regulate the national economy — in the Constitution’s words, the power to “regulate commerce . . . among the several states” and to “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution” its power over the nation’s commerce. While segregationists did indeed claim that this power does not extend to discrimination by local businesses in the 1960s, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected these arguments.
Read more

Conservatives are fond of citing America’s Founding Fathers whenever it seems convenient, whether to back up their fringe beliefs that certain government programs are unconstitutional, to talk about what form of government in which they believe, and sometimes even when the person they’re citing isn’t a Founding Father at all.

Conservatives are also fond of a certain Supreme Court decision that blew up campaign finance laws and opened the door for unlimited — and often undisclosed — donations to super PACs, the campaign organizations that played a marked role in the 2010 midterm elections and have already had a substantial impact on the 2012 Republican primary.

With that in mind, ThinkProgress asked several “Founding Fathers” who attended last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference what they thought about the rise of super PACs and if they intended for elections to one day be dominated by small groups of wealthy individuals and corporations that could funnel huge sums of money into the electoral system. Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson all told ThinkProgress that super PACs were never their intention, as did a 19th century veteran of the fight for the Alamo. James Madison, meanwhile, said he anticipated the rise of super PACs, but that the domination of money in politics would “destroy the country.” Watch it: