Republicans are blocking gun reform but now they are criticizing President Obama for not passing it? The DNC is fuming over a new RNC ad that shows Obama consoling the mother of a victim of the Newtown school shooting -- but criticizes Obama for not passing gun reform in the wake of the shooting. The RNC insisted they used a clip from an ABC News package, with RNC spokesman Sean Spicer tweeting “I don’t think we control ABC.” It’s just another instance of the high-stakes fight over gun reform, coming just two days after New Hampshire Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte was confronted at a town hall meeting by the daughter of the Sandy Hook Elementary School principal, who was killed in the shooting.

The Hill:

The ad, called "The First 100 Days," criticizes Obama on the failure of his legislative agenda, including gun control, so far in Congress. It features a voiceover saying that Obama’s agenda has “already suffered a string of defeats,” and a black and white photo of the president reaching to embrace Nicole Hockley, the distraught mother of a victim in the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse called the ad “disgraceful” in a tweet and “disgusting” in another.

"The bottom feeders behind this one should be embarrassed ," said Jeremy Funk, a spokesman for the Democratic organization Americans United for Change.

In 2009, the RNC also released a video marking President Obama's first 100 days in office, and it was in such poor taste that the RNC pulled it.

How long until this one backfires on them? 3...2..1...

On Saturday, the mother of a young victim of the Newtown massacre, filled in for President Obama on his weekly radio and Internet broadcast. Francine Wheeler said the presence of her son Ben, who was six years old when he was killed along with 19 other first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, gave her the courage to speak out. "Thousands of other families across the United States are also drowning in our grief," she said in a push to get a gun control bill through Congress. "Please help us do something before our tragedy becomes your tragedy." Wheeler is the first person other than Vice President Joe Biden to deliver the address.

Her husband, David Wheeler, sat silently next to her as she made the recording in the White House Library. Both wore the small green pins that have become a symbol of the shooting:

Hi. As you’ve probably noticed, I’m not the President. I’m just a citizen. And as a citizen, I’m here at the White House today because I want to make a difference and I hope you will join me.

My name is Francine Wheeler. My husband David is with me. We live in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.

David and I have two sons. Our older son Nate, soon to be 10 years old, is a fourth grader at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Our younger son, Ben, age six, was murdered in his first-grade classroom on December 14th, exactly 4 months ago this weekend.

David and I lost our beloved son, but Nate lost his best friend. On what turned out to be the last morning of his life, Ben told me, quite out of the blue, “ I still want to be an architect, Mama, but I also want to be a paleontologist, because that’s what Nate is going to be and I want to do everything Nate does.”

Ben’s love of fun and his excitement at the wonders of life were unmatched His boundless energy kept him running across the soccer field long after the game was over. He couldn’t wait to get to school every morning. He sang with perfect pitch and had just played at his third piano recital. Irrepressibly bright and spirited, Ben experienced life at full tilt.

Until that morning. 20 of our children, and 6 of our educators – gone. Out of the blue.

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Mayors Against Illegal Guns released a new television ad Thursday that features family members of four victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting last December, and calls on leaders to remember their loved ones and prevent others from experiencing the toll of gun violence by taking real action to pass commonsense gun law reforms.

The ad features the families of two first-grade students, and two teachers killed in the shooting at Sandy Hook, out of the total 20 children and six adult staffers killed that day. The family members in the ad are Neil Heslin, father of first-grader Jesse Lewis; Chris and Lynn McDonnell, parents of first-grader Grace McDonnell; Jillian Soto, sister of teacher Vicky Soto; and Terri and Gilles Rousseau, parents of teacher Lauren Rousseau.

"I want to prevent any other family from having to go through what we're going through," Chris McDonnell says in the ad.

"Don't let the memory of Newtown fade without doing something real," adds Terri Rousseau.

The ad says that "Connecticut can save lives" and calls for comprehensive background checks, a limit on high-capacity magazines and an assault weapons ban.

The heart wrenching ad is the first to include family members of the Sandy Hook victims in a call for universal background checks for gun sales, which will be a component of the gun control legislation being introduced in the Senate. The ads will air on cable and broadcast television in the Hartford, Connecticut area. and specifically target the state's legislature to enact better gun violence prevention.

WFSB 3 Connecticut

The ATF raided a gun store in East Windsor, Connecticut on Thursday evening after 26-year-old Jordan Marsh, who you can see in the video above stealing a rifle, was found to have an AR-15 with a scope in his possession at the Hartford Hilton on Saturday. Marsh did not pay for the gun, he simply took it off the rack and walked out of the store without anyone realizing it. Marsh reportedly has a history of mental illnesses and police believe he was planning to carry out an attack "similar" to that of Adam Lanza.

The gun store, Riverview Gun Sales, is also the same store where at least one of the guns used by Adam Lanza at the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings was purchased by his mother, Nancy Lanza.

The AR-15 was banned under the now expired Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994.

WFSB 3:

Police said Riverview Gun Sales had no idea the AR-15 Marsh stole was missing. Management at the store didn't know about 11 guns that Marsh had allegedly stolen last year until they were notified by detectives.

Inventory control issues at Riverview Gun Sales have occurred before. In 2007, state police raided a Somers home and found a bunch of stolen guns from the store.

"It was found that the same Riverview gun store was missing upwards of 30-plus guns," said East Windsor police Detective Matthew Carl.

[Emphasis mine.]

Hopefully, the ATF took the store's federal firearms license along with them when they left.

View more videos at: http://nbcconnecticut.com.

The Connecticut State Supreme Court overturned the sexual assault conviction of a man who had sex with a woman who “has severe cerebral palsy, has the intellectual functional equivalent of a 3-year-old and cannot verbally communicate.” The Court held that, because Connecticut statutes define physical incapacity for the purpose of sexual assault as “unconscious or for any other reason so uncommunicative that she was physically unable to communicate unwillingness to an act,” the defendant could not be convicted if there was any chance that the victim could have communicated her lack of consent. Since the victim in this case was capable of “biting, kicking, scratching, screeching, groaning or gesturing,” the Court ruled that that victim could have communicated lack of consent despite her serious mental deficiencies:

When we consider this evidence in the light most favorable to sustaining the verdict, and in a manner that is consistent with the state’s theory of guilt at trial, we, like the Appellate Court, ‘are not persuaded that the state produced any credible evidence that the [victim] was either unconscious or so uncommunicative that she was physically incapable of manifesting to the defendant her lack of consent to sexual intercourse at the time of the alleged sexual assault.’

Anna Doroghazi, director of public policy and communication at Connecticut Sexual Assault Crisis Services expressed concern that “The court’s interpretation of what it means to be ‘physically helpless’ jeopardizes the safety of people with disabilities.”

“By implying that the victim in this case should have bitten or kicked her assailant, this ruling effectively holds people with disabilities to a higher standard than the rest of the population when it comes to proving lack of consent in sexual assault cases,” Doroghazi said. “Failing to bite an assailant is not the same thing as consenting to sexual activity.”