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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) says that if his Imaginary Family were victims of disasters like Hurricane Katrina, they would need to have military-style AR-15 assault rifles to protect themselves against "armed gangs roaming around neighborhoods."

During a hearing Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, the South Carolina Republican pressed Attorney General Eric Holder about his support for a proposed assault weapons ban.

"Can you imagine a circumstance where an AR-15 would be a better defense tool than, say, a double-barrel shotgun?" Graham asked. "Let me give you an example, that you have an lawless environment, where you have an natural disaster or some catastrophic event -- and those things unfortunately do happen, and law and order breaks down because the police can't travel, there's no communication. And there are armed gangs roaming around neighborhoods. Can you imagine a situation where your home happens to be in the crosshairs of this group that a better self-defense weapon may be a semiautomatic AR-15 vs. a double-barrel shotgun?"

Holder pointed out that the senator was "dealing with a hypothetical in a world that doesn't exist."

(Obviously, Eric Holder doesn't get it. That's where all wingnuts live!)

"I'm afraid that world does exist," Graham insisted. "It existed in New Orleans, to some extent up in Long Island [after Hurricane Sandy], it could exist tomorrow if there's a cyber attack against country and the power grid goes down and the dams are released and chemical plants are -- discharges."

(Lindsey really likes to think about --discharges.)

"I don't think that New Orleans would have been better served having people with AR-15s in a post-Katrina environment," Holder replied.

"What I'm saying is if my (imaginary) family was in the crosshairs of gangs that were roaming around neighborhoods in New Orleans or or any other location, the deterrent effect of an AR-15 to protect my family, I think, is greater than a double-barrel shotgun."

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there were reports of armed vigilantes with assault weapons shooting African-Americans.

"Facing an influx of refugees, the residents of Algiers Point could have pulled together food, water and medical supplies for the flood victims," ProPublica's A.C. Thompson wrote in 2008. "Instead, a group of white residents, convinced that crime would arrive with the human exodus, sought to seal off the area, blocking the roads in and out of the neighborhood by dragging lumber and downed trees into the streets. They stockpiled handguns, assault rifles, shotguns and at least one Uzi and began patrolling the streets in pickup trucks and SUVs. The newly formed militia, a loose band of about 15 to 30 residents, most of them men, all of them white, was looking for thieves, outlaws or, as one member put it, anyone who simply 'didn't belong.'"

Thompson found that at least 11 African-American men ended up being shot near the Algiers Point neighborhood by a militia of men who were apparently all white.

(h/t: Think Progress)

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A Missouri lawmaker on Tuesday expressed opposition to an assault weapons ban proposed by Democrats by taking the bill to a local shooting range and riddling it with bullet holes.

In a shocking video posted to YouTube, Republican state Rep. Eric Burlison explains that House Bill 545 would make it a Class C Felony to possess a military-style assault weapon.

"If you don't relinquish these weapons then you'll be a felon and you'll potentially serve in jail," Burlison says, as the names of the four Democratic state lawmakers sponsoring the bill are displayed on the video.

To gauge community reaction to the bill, Burlison travels to a local gun store and shooting range where he meets a woman who thinks the bill is "confusing" and creates "too much red tape."

"I just found out that they're going to make my grandpa go turn in his guns," the woman frets. "A felon! It's nuts! And who's going to administrate all these laws? You know, we're just building a bigger government."

"What do you make of House Bill 545?" the lawmaker asks an assault weapon-wielding man at the firing range.

"It's a great bill," the man deadpans in a rehearsed cadence.

"Really?" Burlison asks, trying to appear surprised.

"Yeah, it's great target practice," the man replies.

After no less than 20 rounds are fired at the legislation, Burlison presses a button to retrieve the paper from the shooting alley.

"You're right!" the lawmaker exclaims. "It does make for a good bill!"

A law recently proposed by Missouri state Rep. Mike Leara’s (R) would make it a Class D felony to introduce any legislation -- like House Bill 545 -- that “further restricts the right of an individual to bear arms."

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A Florida man armed with an weapon that had once been banned under federal law forced his wife to watch as he strangled one of his sons and then shot a second before turning a gun on himself.

Victoria Flores Zavala told Boynton Beach police that 45-year-old Isidro Zavala went to her home on Saturday with a plan to kill her and their two boys because she had filed for divorce last year, according to WTVJ. But Isidro Zavala decide to spare his wife at the last minute so she could suffer while watching him murder 12-year-old Eduardo Zavala and 11-year-old Mario Zavala.

"What Mrs. Zavala had to go through -- watch her children killed before her -- is probably the most horrific thing you could ever imagine, at least for me," Boynton Beach Police Chief G. Matthew Immler explained at a press conference.

"She tried fighting him off and begged him to kill her and not the children," he explained. "He told her she was going to stay alive and suffer the loss of them."

The Palm Beach Post reported on Sunday that Isidro Zavala had killed himself with .38-caliber pistol, but police also recovered a bag with a TEC-9 semi-automatic handgun, extra ammunition, duct tape and cutting shears from the crime scene.

The TEC-9 was among 19 weapons that were banned under the now-expired Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994.

Mariano Batalla, a friend and neighbor of the suspect, said that Isidro Zavala had recently joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and did not seem like the kind of person who could kill someone.

"He never mentioned to me anything about a gun, he never carried a gun," Batalla told the paper. “He never showed that he was depressed, but in his mind, I guess he was planning it all.”

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CNN host Soledad O'Brien on Thursday scolded Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and told him he should know better than to try to link assault weapons to "black violence on blacks" because most recent mass killings had been carried out by white men.

Following National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre's Wednesday testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he opposed universal background checks at gun shows, O'Brien asked Grassley why not support something that seemed like an obvious part of the solution.

Grassley argued that universal background checks would burden people trying to buy a gun on Sunday.

"Obviously we have some background checks, it's how encompassing do you do it?" he explained. "Do you do it for one father selling to a son or another relative or how do you cover everything? I think that's the issue. And also, the extent to which you have private sales on Sunday between relatives, and maybe you can't access the system all the time and as fast as you want to do it."

O'Brien pressed Grassley on why he opposed an assault weapons ban, when even the temporary 1994 ban had reduced the number of crimes involving those firearms by between 17 percent and 72 percent, according to a 2004 study by the University of Pennsylvania.

"I guess you can argue over numbers," Grassley replied, adding that the Columbine High School massacre had occurred during the 1994 ban.

"Part of the argument is if you start now that there's potential down the road to make some of a difference," the CNN host pointed out. "Sometimes I hear the argument that you're never going to get rid of all the guns or you're never going to get rid of all the assault weapons. It seems to me to be a little bit of a specious argument."

O'Brien then wondered why Grassley was also against a "common-sense kind of thing" like tasking the Center for Disease Control with studying gun violence.

"The Center for Disease Control is all about studying diseases, and ownership of guns is not a disease," Grassley insisted.

"Public health?" O'Brien noted. "If you look at a city like Chicago, where there has been just massive, massive deaths from gun violence. That's not a public health issue?"

"Well, I think that's the place in our society where you would study the issue of black violence on blacks," the Iowa Republican asserted. "Most of those guns are pistols and not the guns that you're talking about on this program."

"Well, certainly when we are looking at assault weapons, I know that you know that most of the perpetrators have been white men," O'Brien remarked while noting that the CDC had spent $2.5 million studying gun violence in 1993.

"I would think that anybody who wants to figure out how to stop people from dying in gun violence -- whether it's suicide, whether it's small children being killed in a massacre, whether it's domestic violence -- that just studying the issue would be a good idea for everybody," she continued.

"I said I agree with you because that's part of the mental health issue that we have to deal with, yet, during this debate," Grassley replied. "Because in everyone of these instances that keeps cropping up, where mass killings, people had mental health issues. They shouldn't have had guns in the first place."

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Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) on Sunday lashed out at the National Rifle Association (NRA), suggesting the "venal" organization had been corrupted to the point that it was taking money from gun manufacturers to "provide weapons" to children as young as 8 years old.

In an appearance on CNN, host Candy Crowley asked the California senator if she agreed that opposition from Democrats would make it tough to pass her recently-proposed assault weapons ban.

"Because the NRA is venal," Feinstein explained. "They come after you, they put together large amounts of money to defeat you. They did this [before the assault weapons ban was passed] in '93 and they intend to continue it."

"Are they venal or do they just disagree with you?" Crowley wondered.

"The NRA has become an institution of gun manufacturers," Feinstein insisted. "This morning on the front page of the New York Times, I was reading about their program now to provide weapons and training for youngsters from 8 years old to 15 years old. And this is supported by the gun manufacturers."

"In other words, here is a whole new group of people that we can get these weapons to. They just don't happen to be adults, they're children."

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Vice President Joe Biden is trying to assure survivalists and those preparing for doomsday that they will still be able to protect themselves in case of disaster even if assault weapons are banned because shotguns are more effective weapons for defense.

During a Google Hangout discussion about gun control, YouTube video blogger Philip DeFranco asked the vice president why an assault weapons ban was necessary if the number of murders had gone down since the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act temporarily banning some military-style rifles expired in 2004.

"So what would you say to the people who say, yes, you are infringing on our rights, not for sporting or for hunting, but in California, everyone talks about the big earthquake or some terrible natural disaster as a last line of defense," DeFranco wondered. "What would you say to those people?"

"A shotgun will keep you a lot safer -- a double-barreled shotgun -- than the assault weapons in somebody's hands that doesn't know how to use it, even one that does know how to use it," Biden advised. "You know, it's hard to use an assault weapon and hit something than it is a shotgun."

"If you want to keep people away in an earthquake, buy some shotgun shells," he added. "I'm must less concerned quite frankly about what you would call an assault weapon than I am about magazines and the number of rounds that can be held in a magazine."

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World Net Daily columnist and former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Sunday insisted that Americans were entitled to armor-piercing bullets because they are "a right in our country."

The Pennsylvania Republican told an ABC News panel that conservatives "should stick to our guns" and oppose President Barack Obama's efforts to curb gun violence in the wake of the slaughter of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut.

"Having a gun and gun ownership is part of how people can feel safer," Santorum explained. "And in my opinion, when you look at the disingenuousness of the [Obama] administration when they met with the NRA, and [Vice President] Joe Biden did. And the NRA brought up the fact that prosecutions for gun crimes and prosecutions for people who lie on their registration forms or gun forms are down under this administration. The vice president responded, 'We don't have time to devote to see whether people fill out a form right!'"

Current TV host Jennifer Granholm pointed out that there had been fewer enforcements because the National Rifle Association (NRA) had pushed Republicans to oppose any effort to confirm a head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

"This is not about taking peoples guns away, this is about a narrow set of proposals that will enable us to help enforce the existing gun laws," Granholm explained. "The ban on assault weapons and a ban on high capacity magazines and even a ban on armor-piercing bullets are overwhelmingly supported by the citizenry. Fifty percent of men, 59 percent of women support an assault weapons ban. Same number for a ban on high capacity magazines."

"What about the president's argument that if it can stop even one of these horrific shootings, it's worth a try?" host George Stephanopolous asked Santorum.

"Well, how many people are you going to deny guns who are going to protect themselves?" the former Pennsylvania senator replied.

"Senator, what about the magazines?" ABC correspondent Cokie Roberts wondered. "Why have a magazine that can riddle a 6 year old into shreds?"

"Here's what I would say about that: 50 years ago, you could go on a catalog and buy a gun," Santorum opined. "There were no restrictions on gun ownership, there were no restrictions on magazines, there were no restrictions on anything and we had a lot less violence in society than we do today. The idea of pointing to the gun instead of pointing to society -- and not one thing the president did dealt with Hollywood and gun violence and video games and all the glorification of violence."

"Armor-piercing bullets, why do you need that?" Granholm interrupted.

"Why do you need to protect Hollywood?" Santorum shot back.

"You're deflecting," Granholm observed. "Deer don't wear armor. Why do you need an armor-piercing bullet?"

"But criminals could," Santorum quipped.

"And police officers certainly do," Granholm noted.

"Having the ability to defend yourself is something that is a right in our country," Santorum asserted.

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Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Sunday said that gun control laws were not the answer to mass shootings because hatchets, guns, cars and video games all had a role in violent deaths in the United States.

"What I'm hearing is that people want to make certain that -- first of all -- that we protect the Second Amendment and their Second Amendment rights -- protect their freedom and not impede that," Blackburn told CNN's Candy Crowley, adding that the focus should really be on "psychiatric and psychotropic drugs."

"They are also wanting to make certain we get in behind these video games. I watched a couple of these last night in preparation for this segment and, Candy, as a mother and as a grandmother, I was astounded with some of the things I was seeing on 'Call to Duty' [sic]. And, of course, we know the Norway shooter would go in and use that as target practice."

Crowley observed that "the steam for a ban on assault weapons is slowly coming out of the balloon" as time passes after the December mass shooting of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut.

But New York Times National Political Correspondent Jeff Zeleny pointed out that a defeat of the assault weapons ban would not bring down the entire effort to curb gun violence.

"I think that the president is committed to this," he explained. "Probably background checks, probably the [high-capacity] ammunition clips. But there is going to be another shooting probably, sadly. So, this is going to stay in the consciousness. I don't think this is going to recede."

"But the problem is that it could be a hammer, a hatchet, a car, a gun," Blackburn argued.

"But hammers, hatchets and cars aren't quite as fast as those clips," Crowley noted.

"We're still needing to look at this mental health," Blackburn continued. "And you have to make sure that you're protecting an individual's rights."

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National Rifle Association (NRA) President David Keene admits that that the gun industry funds his organization with generous donations but would like to see even more cash pumped into pro-gun lobbying as opponents try to move forward with efforts to stop mass shootings.

"One of the big questions here is who does the NRA represent?" CNN host Candy Crowley told Keene on Sunday. "You do take millions of dollars from people who make guns and who make bullets, all perfectly legal. I'm sure they're all fine folks."

"Actually, Sandy [sic], we get less money from the industry than we'd like to get," Keene interrupted. "But we get some. We get more than we used to."

"You get millions of dollars from them," Crowley insisted. "The criticism has been out there that you, that the NRA and some other gun-supporter groups gin up this, 'They're going to come take your guns away.' Because what happens, those gun sales rise. And people go out, and you sort of frighten people into thinking your guns are going away... The accusation is that you are ginning up this conversation because it helps gun sales."

"The two people who are selling so-called assault rifles are Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein and President [Barack] Obama, not us," Keene replied. "They're the ones that are scaring American gun owners. It isn't the NRA."

A 2011 report from the Violence Policy Center determined that 74 percent -- or as much as $38.9 million -- of the up to $52 million corporations had contributed to the NRA over six years had come from the firearms industry. During the 2012 election cycle alone, the NRA spent more that $17 million on presidential and congressional races.

And Keene suggested that all that money translated into the ability to block any efforts to ban assault weapons or high-capacity magazines.

"I think right now we do [have the votes in Congress]," the NRA president said. "I would say that the likelihood is that they are not going to be able to get an assault weapons ban through this Congress."

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Fox News host Eric Bolling on Friday insisted that assault-style rifles which can shoot "four or five rounds per second" were "protected under the Constitution."

In his weekly appearance on Fox & Friends, Fox News host Geraldo Rivera predicted that President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden would be successful in enacting some measures to control gun violence after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, but it would be difficult to ban weapons like the Bushmaster AR-15 that was used to slaughter 20 children.

"There really is some movement now for the first time in many decades to have some meaningful reform," he explained. "What I don't expect -- I think it's a long shot, I think the Second Amendment advocates are very strong, they have an excellent case constitutionally -- and it's going to be very, very difficult to ban assault-style weapons. I would love to see them banned except for sanctioned gun clubs, law enforcement and the military."

"You need to address, when you say assault-style weapons," Bolling interrupted. "Because most people understand an assault weapon is currently, not necessarily banned, but almost impossible to own as a civilian."

"You're talking about a fully automatic," Rivera pointed out. "But you're also enough of a gun advocate to know that with a semi-automatic, you can get off four or five rounds per second."

"Absolutely," Bolling agreed. "And that's protected under the constitution. And why are they even putting that in discussions?"

"When does the liberal left say, 'Enough, semi-automatic rifles are banned'? Boom. Then one day, they say, 'You know what? Semi-automatic handguns are illegal also,'" he added.

"Why do you need 30 rounds in the clip of your Glock [handgun], in the clip of you 9 mm?" Rivera wondered. "Why do you need 30 rounds? What are you going to do with 30 rounds in your pistol?"

The Fox News morning show then played a 2008 clip of then-candidates Biden and Obama promising not to take people's shotguns, which was accompanied by a red siren and a graphic that read, "Hypocrisy Alert."

"A lot of people are afraid that one thing is going to lead to another," co-host Steve Doocy opined.

"I think that paranoia is unfortunate," Rivera replied. "I think when you examine those people who are stocking up arsenals of AR-15s and .223 Bushmasters, they are often people who are so deeply suspicious of their own government that it is bitterly ironic that these are the same people who claim a mantel of patriotism."