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.

HOUSTON, TX — Two prominent gun rights groups are distributing literature taking apart the National Rifle Association (NRA)’s misinformation on the Manchin-Toomey background check bill — at the NRA’s own conference.

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) bills itself as the second largest gun advocacy organization in the country. Its leader, Alan Gottlieb, also heads up the Second Amendment Foundation, a pro-gun legal action group that brought the case (McDonald v. Chicago) that required all states to treat handgun ownership as a constitutional right. The two organizations appear, judging from joint flyers distributed at the NRA conference, to coordinate.

CCRKBA kicked up a controversy in April, when it broke with the NRA to support the Manchin-Toomey expanded background checks bills. (The group later withdrew its support for Manchin-Toomey right before the vote because a pro-gun amendment it supported was not being considered.) But despite the bill’s (perhaps temporary) defeat in the Senate, CCRKBA doesn’t appear to be backing down — The Gun Mag, a Second Amendment Foundation publication, published an “NRA Meeting Special Issue” whose lead article takes apart the NRA’s line on Manchin-Toomey.

The article, written by former NRA Board member Dave Workman, takes an oblique shot at the NRA, which built its argument against Manchin-Toomey on the specter of gun registration and confiscation:

Gun rights activists across the nation believe the Schumer measure would establish a de facto gun registry due to a record keeping requirement. There is no record keeping provision in the Manchin-Toomey bill, and using background check information to create a registry would be punishable by up to 15 years in prison.[...]

The Manchin-Toomey alternative would provide for background checks on all commercial gun sales, including those done at gun shows and that originate on the Internet. An important exemption applies to transfers of firearms between family members, and private sales between friends and neighbors would also be exempt.

Though the Manchin-Toomey bill did not receive enough support to break a filibuster against it, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used a procedural maneuver to ensure the bill could be reconsidered at a future date.

Gun owners should store a gun in their kids’ room, according to a ‘Home Defense Concepts’ seminar offered at the National Rifle Association’s Annual Meeting, comments that came just days after the fatal shooting of a two-year-old at the hands of her five-year-old brother.

The course was taught by Rob Pincus, who owns the popular firearm instruction company I.C.E. Training. Pincus argued that, in the event of a home invasion, parents would instinctually run to their children’s room anyway, they might as well have a gun stored there to kill two birds with one stone:

PINCUS: How about putting a quick-access safe in your kids’ room? [...] Good idea or bad idea? We have an emotional pushback to that. Here’s my position on this. If you’re worried that your kid is going to try to break into the safe that is in their bedroom with a gun in it, you have bigger problems than home defense. [Laughter] If you think that the kid who’s going to try to break into the safe because it’s in their room isn’t sneaking into your room to try to break into stuff, you’re naive and you have bigger problems than this. So let’s settle that issue and think about it. In the middle of the night, if I’m in the bathroom or getting a glass of water or in the bedroom or watching TV in the living room, if that alarm goes off and the glass breaks and the dog starts barking, what’s the instinct that most people are going to have, in regards to, “am I going to run across the house to get the gun, or am I going to run over here to help the screaming kid?” And if I’m going to go to the kid anyway, and I have an extra gun and an extra safe, why not put it in their closet?

Watch it (pardon the technical glitch at 1:25):

Defensive gun use against home invasions are extremely rare. Many of the statistics commonly cited by the NRA and its allies are based on mathematically impossible calculations, and the best available evidence suggests that almost all criminals hit in gunfire were shot by other criminals.

However, children are wounded and killed by accidental gunshots with horrifying frequency. Roughly 900 kids were killed in gun suicides or accidents in 2010. A Center for Disease Control study of 30,000 incidents of children killed by accidental firearm discharge found kids 0-4 were 17 times more likely to be killed in a gun accident in the states with the four highest levels of gun ownership than those with the four lowest (the figure was 13 times for kids aged 5-14). Relatedly, a RAND Institute study found that only 39 percent of parents who own guns kept their guns “locked, unloaded, and separate from ammunition.”

Pincus teaches an intruder defense course in schools around the country.

HOUSTON, TX — The National Rifle Association (NRA) is an overwhelmingly male organization. There’s a reason for that: women are all too familiar with the ways guns can make a dangerous situation worse. They tend to support gun violence prevention measures by over 20 points more than their male counterparts.

The NRA and its allies in the gun industry have realized that fifty percent of the population is a rather large market to leave untapped. Unfortunately, the most visible attempts to broaden the gun lobby’s appeal to women at the NRA convention this week haven’t been newly moderated policies, but stands that sell pink guns which can be strapped to a bra.

Vendors also offered various rifles and clothing options for women in colors ranging from fuchsia to lavender:

Walking throughout the exhibit hall, there were few booths focused on the threat women face of domestic violence. But there were plenty of pink gun accessories:

No booth proposed new ways to stop stalkers who go on to murder women from obtaining guns, but there were posters on how to look sexy with your firearm (to be fair, we have some doubts that women are the intended audience for these posters):

HOUSTON — Just days after a five year old killed his two year old sister with a gun made for children, the National Rifle Association (NRA) Annual Meeting pushed firearms into the hands of youth, including on-premises sale of weapons marketed explicitly to kids, an official NRA publication, and a “Youth Day” at the conference.

This is an NRA bib and child’s t-shirt:

A magazine cover targeting “young shooters” was on prominent display in the main convention hall as part of an NRA spread of official publications:

These weapons were available for purchase in the same convention hall, which doubled as a massive gun show:

Women and Guns, another magazine on display, included a lengthy profile of 19 year old McKenzie Gunns, who is helping Taurus Firearms conduct “a full turn around in their marketing” to “reach out to young people:”

The aforementioned Women and Guns also contained these pictures of children with guns in a piece on “Project Appleseed,” a program to teach young kids to use guns around the country:

On Thursday, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) approved a law that will allot additional funding to the California police to confiscate illegal firearms.

SB 140 will dedicate $24 million toward tracking and confiscating weapons possessed by people who aren’t permitted them under state law — such as criminals and those with mental illness. This addresses a major problem in California, where it’s estimated that, nearly 20,000 felons or the mentally ill posses a total of 39,000 guns. California is the only state that keeps a list of people who once qualified but are no longer eligible to own a gun.

The money is just under what California’s chief of the Bureau of Firearms Stephen Lindley said the department would need. It will allow the state to hire 36 agents dedicated to confiscating illegal firearms.

The law was part of a package of 30 bills, proposed in the wake of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, aimed at curbing gun violence. The NRA staunchly opposed the effort, which it deemed “steal[ing] from law-abiding gun owners.”

In a 2012 speech to the New York Rifle & Pistol Association, where he also refers to President Obama as a “fake president” and calls Attorney General Eric Holder “rabidly unAmerican,” incoming National Rifle Association President Jim Porter applied an odd label to the war that ended slavery in the United States and put down the single greatest act of treason in our nation’s history:

The NRA was started, 1871, right here in New York state. It was started by some Yankee generals who didn’t like the way my southern boys had the ability to shoot in what we call the “War of Northern Aggression.” Now, y’all might call it the Civil War, but we call it the War of Northern Aggression down south.

But that was the very reason that they started the National Rifle Association, was to teach and train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm. And I am one who still feels very strongly that that is one of our most greatest charges that we can have today, is to train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm, so that when they have to fight for their country they’re ready to do it. Also, when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they’re ready to do it. Also, when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they have the wherewithal and the weapons to do it.

Watch it:

Setting aside Porter’s unfortunate label for the Civil War, his speech suggests the NRA could take an even sharper turn to the right than it has under its present leadership. One of the standard issue firearms for infantry servicemembers is either the M16 rifle or the M4 carbine, depending on the branch of service. Both come standard with the ability to fire 3-round bursts, and many models are fully automatic weapons. So when Porter calls for civilians to be trained “in the use of the standard military firearm,” these are the weapons he is describing.

Indeed, the the term “standard military firearm” may include even more deadly weapons. A former Army sergeant and Iraq War vet ThinkProgress spoke with identified the AT-4 antitank grenade launcher and the M203A1 grenade launcher as weapons she was trained to use as part of her standard issue training. In addition to her rifle and a standard issue pistol, she also carried a SAW M249 sub-machine gun as a standard armament during convoy missions. Here is video of what this weapon can do:

By contrast, the NRA’s outgoing president David Keene, recently told an audience at Harvard University that he believes “fully automatic weapons” should be illegal for civilian use.

(HT: Matt Gertz)

It is illegal for a person under the age of 21 to buy beer. Yet, a lawsuit filed by the National Rifle Association wants them to be able to buy a deadly machine that exists for the sole purpose of forcing a high-velocity slug of metal into another human being. Yesterday, one of the most conservative federal appeals courts in the country disagreed.

Two George W. Bush appointees to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit joined a unanimous revised opinion yesterday rejecting the NRA’s claim that 18 year-olds should be allowed to buy handguns from federally licensed firearm dealers. The opinion is complex and relies at least two alternative grounds for upholding the ban on gun sales to young people, but its discussion of how the founding generation would have treated this NRA’s absolutist view of gun rights is particularly significant:

The historical record shows that gun safety regulation was commonplace in the colonies, and around the time of the founding, a variety of gun safety regulations were on the books; these included safety laws regulating the storage of gun powder, laws keeping track of who in the community had guns, laws administering gun use in the context of militia service (including laws requiring militia members to attend “musters,” public gatherings where officials would inspect and account for guns), laws prohibiting the use of firearms on certain occasions and in certain places, and laws disarming certain groups and restricting sales to certain groups. It appears that when the fledgling republic adopted the Second Amendment, an expectation of sensible gun safety regulation was woven into the tapestry of the guarantee. . . .

Scholars have proposed that at the time of the founding, “the right to arms was inextricably and multifariously linked to that of civic virtu (i.e., the virtuous citizenry),” and that “[o]ne implication of this emphasis on the virtuous citizen is that the right to arms does not preclude laws disarming the unvirtuous citizens (i.e., criminals) or those who, like children or the mentally imbalanced, are deemed incapable of virtue.” This theory suggests that the Founders would have supported limiting or banning “the ownership of firearms by minors, felons, and the mentally impaired.” . . . . Notably, the term “minor” or “infant”—as those terms were historically understood—applied to persons under the age of 21, not only to persons under the age of 18.

The NRA will no doubt be distressed to learn that one of their biggest bugaboos — a government-run registry of firearm owners — was commonplace around the time of the founding. They will be even more dismayed to see it described in a judicial opinion strongly suggesting that such registries are constitutional. And this comes from a three-judge panel that includes two Bush-appointees.

Notably, the Fifth Circuit released an order today indicating that seven of the court’s 15 active judges voted to have the full court rehear the case. Had one more judge voted for such a rehearing, it would have taken place. Of these seven, only six actually indicated that they disagreed with the three-judge panel’s decision. The seventh judge, Obama appointee Stephen Higginson, was silent on whether he agreed with the panel’s decision. All six of the judges who called for gun regulation to be less strict than beer regulation were Republicans.

The NRA will no doubt appeal this decision to the Supreme Court, but the Fifth Circuit’s resolution of the case is a good sign that the justices will not strike down the ban on gun sales to young people. Beyond the fact that two Bush-appointees voted to uphold this law, the judges who called for it to be struck down include some of the most severely conservative judges in the country.

Judge Jerry Smith, for example, is the same judge who ordered a Justice Department attorney to write a letter he likely intended to use to embarrass President Obama. Judge Edith Clement sat on the board of a group that used to be one of the leading sponsors of corporate-friendly junkets for judges. And Judge Priscilla Owen once took thousands of dollars worth of campaign contributions from Enron when she sat on the Texas Supreme Court, and then wrote a key opinion reducing Enron’s taxes by $15 million.

The author of the pro-NRA opinion was Judge Edith Jones. Jones once told a liberal colleague to “shut up” during the middle of an oral argument, and she is one of the most frequent attendees of junkets for judges. Jones also wrote a dissenting opinion claiming that a woman who “was repeatedly propositioned, was groped and grabbed, [had] pornography [] placed in her locker, and [had] other employees broadcast[] obscene comments about her over the company’s public address system” did not experience sexual harassment.

So, while it is true that six judges did adopt the NRA’s view in this case, they are the kinds of judges who sit well to the right of even this Supreme Court.