New York State Assemblyman Steve Katz (R) spoke out against the state’s proposed ban on assault weapons on Tuesday and threatened to defy the legislation should it become law.

New York is expected to become the first state to pass a gun safety measure since the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, with a final vote scheduled for Tuesday. The comprehensive measure outlaws assault weapons and high capacity ammunition and requires New Yorkers who own military style firearms to register them with the state police. Gun magazine that can hold over 7 rounds of ammunition would be banned, the state will conduct more background checks and access to guns by the mentally ill will be drastically limited.

Speaking against the bill, Katz warned that it transforms gun owners into “a new class of criminals overnight” and pledged to load his wife’s guns with more bullets than is allowed under the proposed legislation:

KATZ: After what happened to the young mother in Loganville, Georgia who defended her two young children against an intruder, this bill would turn me into a criminal because you can bet that before I leave to do the people’s work, there will be more than 7 bullets in the magazine of my wife’s firearm.

Watch it:

While some Republicans support the measure, others argue that it will result in job losses and limit the rights of law abiding citizens from protecting themselves.

Throughout Tuesday’s debate, the GOP warned that some gun owners or dealers may refuse to register their weapons, conduct background checks, and “push back” against the restrictions through violent means. Republicans also charged that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) is rushing the restrictions to advance his own presidential ambitions.

Meanwhile, research shows that a “gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used in a completed or attempted suicide (11x), criminal assault or homicide (7x), or unintentional shooting death or injury (4x) than to be used in a self-defense shooting.”

Earlier this year, Virginia’s legislature commissioned a study to determine the impacts of climate change on the state’s shores. After Tea Party complaints, lawmakers approved the report on condition it strike the words “climate change” and “sea level rise” from the title.

This week, Virginia released its analysis, under the title “Recurrent Flooding Study for Tidewater Virginia.” The report discusses the threat of flooding and rising sea levels to coastal Virginia, but gives less notice to the causes of climate change.

State Delegate Chris Stolle (R), a climate denier himself, deemed terms like “sea level rise” “liberal code words” and insisted on cutting them from the report’s description. The Virginia Tea Party originally slammed the study as “more ridiculous studies designed to separate us from our money and control all land and water use.”

The science backing climate change is noncontroversial. Even the modified report recognizes the reality of the changing climate:

Sea level rise in Virginia is a documented fact. Water levels in Hampton Roads have risen more than one foot over the past 80 years. The causes of this rise are well understood and current analyses suggest the rate of rise is increasing.

Despite the report’s concrete recommendations that Virginia “should immediately begin comprehensive and coordinated planning efforts,” lawmakers have already decided to ignore it, even though Virginia cities spend millions each year elevating roads and replacing piers to withstand flooding. The Virginian-Pilot writes, “State Sen. Ralph Northam, a Democrat who represents Norfolk and the Eastern Shore, and who was a co-patron of the study request last year, said he has no plans to introduce legislation on sea level rise this year. Neither does state Del. Chris Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, who also was a co-patron of the study last year.”

A smoothie shop in Vernal, Utah is sparking outrage over an unorthodox pricing structure that charges liberals an extra dollar. The shop, tellingly named the I Love Drilling Juice and Smoothie Bar, is owned by George Burnett, a pro-oil and gas activist. He donates the extra money to conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation.

“I’m very open about it, very public about it, that I’m going to charge them a little bit more, and I have liberals come in and pay the extra dollar surcharge,” Burnett said, referring to his unique pricing structure. [...] “And actually all three liberals have been happy to pay it. We had a husband and wife come in — he was conservative and she was liberal — and he paid conservative for himself and liberal for her.”

Watch it:

The juice bar is just one element of Burnett’s activist gimmick. On his website, he sells “I Love Drilling” shirts and bumper stickers. Burnett claims he wants to start a conversation about “the fiscal differences between big government/small government and liberal ways.” The liberal tax is intended to “help make that point.”

One conservative customer went even farther, explaining, “For him to do this kind of puts a face out there on people who are, in my opinion, in the wrong. ‘In the wrong’ being liberals,” Peterson said. “To see them being charged a little bit more, it makes me happy.”

Vice President Joe Biden is slated to deliver his suggestions for a series of gun violence prevention measures to the President today. Most likely, stronger gun regulations will be among the measures Biden proposes. And while the gun lobby may argue that such laws are out of step with the opinions of gun owners, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that people who have a firearm in their home actually support a lot of gun safety measures.

Here are the top five gun laws that most gun owners would like to see:

1. Universal background checks. The poll found that a huge majority of gun owners — 86 percent — would like to see every single person who wants to purchase a firearm go through a background check. Currently, the so-called ‘gun show loophole’ allows some purchasers (those who buy used guns and those who buy at gun shows) to forgo a background check, setting up a system where criminals can easily purchase weapons.

2. Background checks for ammunition purchasing. As the law currently stands, ammunition can be purchased in bulk online with absolutely no background check. This is how mass murderer James Holmes was able to stockpile so much ammunition without anyone noticing. Seventy six percent of gun owners surveyed by the Washington Post want to see this law changed by instituting background checks for buying ammunition.

3. Ban on extended magazines. Extended magazine clips have been a focus of the recent gun law debate. Such clips, when used in mass killings, prove exceptionally deadly since, paired with an assault weapon, the gunman rarely has to stop and reload. Adam Lanza, the gunman responsible for the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, used extended clips, as did Holmes. There’s no reason why a clip with more than is necessary to hunt, or for self protection, and 55 percent of gun owners want to see them outlawed.

4. Gun database. The United States already has a database of those who cannot buy guns — the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, NICS — but has much weaker methods of tracking the guns sold in the United States. Sixty two percent of gun owners like the idea of a database of guns purchases, so that the government has some handle on how many guns are out there. There have been reports that such a database, and a database of gun violence, might be among Biden’s suggestions.

5. Assault weapons ban. There’s not quite a majority of gun owners who support an assault weapons ban, but at 45 percent popularity, it’s close to tied between those who support and those who oppose. An assault weapons ban would block military-grade weapons, like those used by Lanza and Holmes, from sale on the public market. There’s evidence that such bans reduce the number of firearms deaths.

The support for each of these measures demonstrates that the gun lobby is out of step with everyday gun owners. NRA representatives insist that Congress won’t pass ammunition clip bans, for example, and say that background checks are “unnecessary” and expensive. But even NRA members support more regulations on guns than the lobby would like to indicate.

And members of Congress will soon have an opportunity to stand with the gun owners who support these stronger gun laws. Eight bills have already been introduced in the House that deal with these issues, and more are likely to be introduced after Biden presents the findings of his task force to President Obama.

You’d be forgiven for having not heard of Agenda 21. Developed at a summit in Brazil in 1992 with support from President George H.W. Bush, Agenda 21 is a series of non-binding UN recommendations for ensuring that economic growth does not undermine the environment. The agreement aims to encourage “international cooperation to accelerate sustainable development in developing countries” through voluntary actions by UN member-states. You can read the full, innocuous text here.

But right-wing Republicans have somehow come to believe that Agenda 21 contains a secret, nefarious plot to destroy American life and society as we know it, birthing a cottage industry devoted to spreading misinformation about the UN proposal. The most recent evidence of this movement’s reach is a proposal by two Indiana lawmakers to ban the implementation of any Agenda 21-inspired initiatives in the state. The Republican state legislators, Rep. Tim Neese and Sen. Dennis Kruse, proposed laws prohibiting the implementation of Agenda-21 inside Indiana. Neese worried that the document — which has no legal power to reshape American law — was a “mandate” that threatened his freedom:

I don’t see it as a battle with environmentalists, as long as people have the ability to choose. So when any type of special interest tries to — through a policy whether it be a legislative body or local or state official — to mandate that a specific type of material has to be used. That’s where I think the Agenda 21 policy is going beyond what is neutral.

As far as Agenda 21 fearmongering goes, however, Neese is on the moderate side. Last October, Georgia Republicans fretted that President Obama was using CIA-developed mind-control to implement Agenda 21′s plot to establish a dictatorship and ban suburbs. Sen. Ten Cruz (R-TX) deemed the it to be a paramount threat to America’s golf courses. The Republican National Committee called Agenda 21 “destructive and insidious,” and the 2012 party platform condemned it as “erosive of American sovereignty.” And this isn’t just idle talk – Alabama and Tennessee have already passed bans on Agenda 21 implementation, and five states (including Indiana) will consider them this legislative term.

Sadly, GOP paranoia about the United Nations isn’t limited to fear of Agenda 21. During the campaign, former Presidential candidate Mitt Romney suggested the United Nations was planning to force American parents to raise their children according to UN guidelines and override the Second Amendment. The latter fear is widespread among Republicans — Senate Republicans spiked the UN Arms Trade Treaty, a convention regulating the international arms trade with no effect on domestic law. Senate Republicans did the same thing, on similarly paranoid grounds, to the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disability and the Law of the Sea treaty.

One month after Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre prompted a national debate about preventing gun violence, state lawmakers have indicated they will push gun violence prevention measures, such as universal background checks, limiting high-capacity ammunition, and banning assault weapons. Right now, the vast majority of states have no laws on many of these issues.

While the country anticipates Vice President Joe Biden’s taskforce recommendations, Congress and many states have already pushed for some practical reforms:

– New York: The state will be the first to enact tougher laws. It expects to vote on the package on Monday, which expands New York’s ban on assault weapons, limits magazines to seven bullets, and requires background checks for private gun sales.

– Massachusetts: Governor Deval Patrick will seek tougher gun restrictions this session, such as limiting gun purchases to one per month and enhancing background screening.

– Maryland: Gov. Martin O’Malley plans “to propose limits on assault weapons and high- capacity magazines, as well as tougher licensing requirements for handguns.”

– Illinois: There are proposals to ban assault weapons, after a similar measure died last year due opposition from the NRA.

– Colorado: Gov. John Hickenlooper used his state address to call for background checks on private gun sales, currently exempt through the “gunshow loophole.”

– Arizona: In the Republican-controlled Arizona legislature, Democrats unveiled a plan for universal background checks.

– Delaware: Lawmakers are seeking background checks on private gun sales, a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips.

–Oregon: State Sen. Ginny Burdick (D) is backing bills that would ban or limit assault rifles and and expand background checks.

– California: State Sen. Leland Yee (D) will reintroduce a bill from last year prohibiting gun owners from outfitting semi-automatic weapons with devices that allow them to shoot more rounds.

– Florida: Florida has a new bill introduced by the Democratic House minority that gives local governments authority to ban concealed weapons from public events.

In Congress, lawmakers have already introduced eight smart bills on gun safety.

The debate has also galvanized gun groups from extreme quarters, notably the National Rifle Association. Elsewhere, Republican lawmakers in South Carolina, Indiana, Texas have pushed to weaken gun violence prevention in the wake of Sandy Hook.

A new report from the Center for American Progress outlines the 13 steps Congress and the president can take to address gun violence, including background checks on all gun sales and reinstating the assault weapons ban.