RACHEL MADDOW (HOST): As long as people weren't being frisked or walked through a metal detector it's not that hard to understand how a person could get a handgun and spare bullets and even spare ammunition magazines for a rifle, how you could get those things smuggled into a nightclub. How do you get the rifle into the nightclub with nobody noticing? Full-size assault-style military-style rifle, how do you get that in?

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Now, though, that logistical question about how somebody could get a rifle, a long gun into a nightclub, it may be at least partially answered because we now know that this assault-style rifle was one of these. It's called a Sig Sauer MCX. And I'm going to show you a clip of how Sig Sauer markets this particular rifle. And I will warn you, if you're sensitive to gun imagery in particular, this video this advertisement is a little disturbing given what we now know about how this rifle, this particular model of rifle, was just used inside that nightclub. But I actually think that -- I'm sort of willing to risk it being disturbing, because I think it's helpful to see. It's helpful to understanding part of the logistics of what just happened and how this killer pulled it off, because of the particular features of this particular gun, including that Sig Sauer brags about in this advertisement. Here's the gun ad, watch.

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That is apparently the rifle that was used at the nightclub shooting this weekend; that's the way that Sig Sauer advertises that rifle. Knowing that that gun was one of at least two weapons that was just used to kill 49 Americans in a dark nightclub this weekend, it's a little bit hard to watch that footage of the black-clad shooter walking around in a foggy environment, shooting at targets, right? But if you watch what they're advertising about the gun, it does also explain part of how this guy may have gotten that weapon inside the club in the first place. This is a long gun, it is a full-sized rifle. But one of the things that Sig Sauer brags about for this rifle in particular is it folds up very small.

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When they say “short” , they're not talking about the length of the barrel. They're talking about the back half of the gun, they're talking about the part of the gun that goes against your shoulder. See, they've got that little graphic there to indicate a folding stock. They sell this gun with all sorts of different attachments and all sorts of different ways you can configure it. But one of the things they brag on is that it comes with a folding stock.

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So they're proud of the modularity of this rifle. It comes with a folding stock that folds 180 degrees around and lays right alongside the rest of the rifle. So you can fold it up and make it very small. You can also swap out that stock and put on all sorts of different stocks that they sell or that other companies sell, other ones that fold. Some of the stocks they sell are telescoping which means they collapse, they just go down very flat without having to fold them. What folding stocks and telescoping stocks have in common is that when you fold them up or compress them, they make this otherwise long gun short. They make it small. Not quite handgun size but small enough that conceivably you could conceal it in a coat or something if you wanted to get your full-sized military-style assault rifle into a crowded nightclub.

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In terms of understanding what happened inside that dark nightclub at 2:00 in the morning Sunday and how one guy was able to kill 49 other people and wound at least that many, it helps to know and I think it's chilling to know that one of the things that this American gun company markets about this gun is that it is super easy to fire. It's easier to fire than an AR-15. And it fires faster and with less kick than your standard AR-15. If you've ever handled an AR-15, if you've ever fired one at a shooting range -- I like shooting guns at shooting ranges, I have shot an AR-15 a bunch of times. One of the things that is unnerving about it is that when you hold one and when you fire it, it's light enough and controllable enough and easy enough to handle and use, that literally a four-year old or a five-year old could reasonable handle one, and fire in the right direction. It's a very easy-to-use weapon that's very light and very easy to handle and that doesn't kick much when you pull the trigger. This Sig Sauer MCX is designed to be even easier to fire than that. Specifically it's designed to have even less kick than an AR-15 so you can squeeze off more rounds faster than even your standard AR-15.

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Less muzzle flip. Faster follow-on shots. Less recoil impulse into the shoulder. An AR-15 assault rifle, the most popular assault-style rifle in the United States, is frighteningly easy to fire very quickly. It has almost no kick, very easy to handle. This gun that was used in Orlando, we now know it's a gun that's designed to have even less kick. Specifically so you can fire it even faster. And you can fold up the stock to make it super small so you can hide it inside your coat. In Sig Sauer's marketing materials they stress over and over again how this is a rifle designed for the military and law enforcement. They say it was designed to Department of Defense specifications at the Pentagon's request. They fall all over themselves in their marketing material to say how much respect they as a company have for the military and for law enforcement personnel. They say they make these guns as great as possible because they know police officers and soldiers' lives are depending on these guns. And then they sell them to the general public. They sell them to anybody who walks in off the street. They're legal for just about anyone to buy.