Maddow: GOP can't stop playing to its 'apocalyptic, paranoid, gun nut' base

The Republican-led House of Representatives managed to pass a piece of gun-related legislation in time for Friday, the six-month anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. According to Rachel Maddow, however, the law is a conspiracy theory-inspired piece of right-wing fantasy come to life.

"The Republicans in the House of Representatives passed one piece of gun-related legislation since Newtown," Maddow said, "and it is a bill to stop the government from buying ammunition, to stop law enforcement from buying ammunition. So that in the shooting war, the U.S. government is about to declare on American citizens, the government side will run out of bullets sooner, and then Fox News can win the war. Or something."

She then played video clips of right-wing personalities like Lou Dobbs, Pat Robertson and head NRA lobbyist Wayne LaPierre discussing the Alex Jones-style conspiracy theory that the U.S. government is arming itself against the population, "stockpiling" ordnance to use against the American people.

This particular conservative freakout was born, as Maddow said, "in the usual conspiracy clearinghouses," World Net Daily, TheBlaze.com and InfoWars.com.

The trouble is that these kinds of right-wing extremist ideas are getting traction in Congress. Republican politicians are legislating against their own straw men.

It's a real problem, said Maddow, when laws are being determined by "people who believe President Obama decides where tornadoes go," referring to InfoWars.com's Alex Jones' talk of a "weather weapon" in the wake of the massive tornado that devastated Moore, Oklahoma.

Congress, she said, "cannot get anything done about guns or ammunition, or our country's massive and worsening problem with mass shootings," but somehow they always find time to "feed the apocalyptic, paranoid, 'from my cold dead hands,' war-against-the-government, conspiratorial gun nut base that they thrive on. They can feed that. That's what they can get done."

Not coincidentally, Maddow noted, "Congress has not only fallen to the lowest level ever recorded since the dawn of modern polling" in the eyes of the public, "the level of confidence that Americans have in Congress has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded for any American major institution ever in the history of polling" according to a Gallup poll released on Friday.

Watch the video, embedded below via MSNBC:

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