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This is the second time I've heard Chris Wallace repeat this remark that the Boston residents on lockdown during the manhunt last week would have been safer if they were just more heavily armed. The first time was right around the same time Arkansas state Rep. Nate Bell sent out this tweet, on one of other the Faux "News" morning shows. The second time was during his interview with Rep. Dianne Feinstein on Fox News Sunday, who pushed back sternly at Wallace's assertion.

From Politicususa: Dianne Feinstein Calls BS on the Right’s Fantasy That Assault Weapons Can Stop Terrorists:

The thing that the right doesn’t seem to understand is that the Boston manhunt makes the case for why everyone should not have an assault weapon. The bombers were able to kill a campus police officer because they had the element of surprise. They were able to carjack and rob someone due to the element of surprise. A panicked population armed with assault weapons is likely to take law enforcement’s focus off of the bombers, because they would be dealing with every trigger happy scared individual who fired their gun. The last thing law enforcement needed during the search for the bombers was more people running around with guns.

Arming more people with assault weapons would help terrorists by distracting law enforcement. Sen. Feinstein was correct. If people wanted to feel safe there are literally thousands of guns that they could own.

The idea that assault weapons in the hands of regular citizens can stop terrorism is more NRA action movie fantasy.

The reality is that a scared and on edge population armed with assault weapons probably would have resulted in more death and destruction, but this is something that the NRA and their congressional lackeys don’t want to discuss.

Full transcript below the fold.

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As Igor Volsky at Think Progress noted yesterday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) got called out during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing when repeating the NRA's talking points about why background checks for all gun purchases supposedly won't work. It was nice to see someone stand up to Graham and the bullying we've seen from him during these hearings.

Police Chief Embarrasses Lindsey Graham At Gun Hearing:

During a heated exchange at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) proposed assault weapons ban on Wednesday, Edward Flynn pointedly interrupted Graham’s claims that the federal government is failing to deter individuals from misrepresenting themselves in the background check process by failing to prosecute people who were rejected from purchasing a weapon as a result of their false claims.

Flynn argued that rather than embark on a “paper chase,” law enforcement officials are focused on preventing people from purchasing guns illegally, eliciting loud applause from the audience:

GRAHAM: When almost 80,000 people fail a background check and 44 people are prosecuted, what kind of deterrent is that? I mean, the law obviously is not seeing that as important…. We absolutely do nothing to enforce the laws on the books…

FLYNN: Just for the record, from my point of view, the point of a background check…

GRAHAM: How many cases have you made? How many cases have you made?

FLYNN: It doesn’t matter, it’s a paper thing. I want to stop 76,000 people from getting guns illegally. That’s what a background check does. If you think we’re going to do paperwork prosecutions, you’re wrong. [...] We don’t make those cases. We have priorities. We make gun cases. We make 2,000 gun cases a year, senator, that’s our priority. We’re not in a paper chase. We’re trying to prevent the wrong people from buying guns. That’s why we do background checks. If you think I’m going to do a paper chase, then you think I’m going to misuse my resources.

[...] Indeed, the “low number of prosecutions in 2010, the most recent year for which data are available, is consistent with other years” and is often seen as a poor use of resources. Prosecutors must prove that “the person knew they were lying when they tried to purchase the firearm” in order to secure a conviction which “usually carries a maximum sentence of just six months.”

UPDATE: The Rev. Al Sharpton spoke to Chief Flynn following his testimony and got his reaction to the heated exchange he had with Graham during the hearing. Flynn expressed his frustration over his dealings with Graham and I wanted to share at least this short portion of his conversation with Sharpton about the hearing:

FLYNN: And I found extraordinarily frustrating as I sat there... every one of those Senators with Lindsey Graham got up there and said, oh, we respect your work and oh, we're so sorry about the tragedy in Newtown, but, oh by the way, we're not going to do anything about it. Well, that's unacceptable. And you can't help but become a little agitated when somebody engages in a piece of sophistry that says, look over here, nobody prosecuted these people for filling out their paperwork wrong. No, but we've locked up thousands of gun offenders and the paperwork that was done prevented hundreds of thousands of more from getting guns illegally. So the background check worked.

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I'm fairly sure Graham knows that, but as long as he's worried about some TeaBircher giving him a primary challenge, he's going to continue with the sophistry.

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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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A pro-Second Amendment group in Georgia has partnered with a gun shop in the state to give away a free AR-15 assault rifle -- like the one used to slaughter 20 children in Newtown last month -- in an effort to oppose new gun control legislation.

In a press release obtained by Mother Jones on Monday, Georgia Gun Owners said that it would be providing one AR-15 courtesy of Armistead Arms in Alpharetta "to alert, activate and mobilize gun owners in every corner of the state to oppose the Feinstein Gun Ban and others being touted in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere across the country."

An entry form for the giveaway explains that "[f]irearms prize winners must meet all legal requirements and will be subject to a dealer’s background check."

In addition to opposing Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) proposed assault weapons ban, Georgia Gun Owners also recently encouraged its members to support a Georgia bill that would allow gun owners to have a concealed weapon without a permit.

Savannah-Chatham Metro Police Chief Willie Lovett told WTVM that he was "totally opposed" to doing away with concealed-carry permits because it just made things "easier for criminals."

"To confront someone who shouldn't have a weapon at all, yet, not know if they have a permit for that weapon puts us in a bad situation," Lovett explained.

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Another Sunday, another interview with Lindsey Graham threatening the full faith and credit of the United States of America if he doesn't get his way and stick it to senior citizens with cuts to our social safety nets: Lindsey Graham: I Will Destroy America’s Solvency Unless The Social Security Retirement Age Is Raised:

Although official Washington is currently fixated on the so-called “Fiscal Cliff,” the biggest threat to American prosperity is the debt ceiling, which must be raised in February to prevent economic catastrophe. If Republicans refuse to reach a deal on the so-called cliff, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that they will spark a new recession in 2013. But if Republicans block action on the debt ceiling, they will make that potential recession look quaint. Without raising the debt ceiling, the United States will be forced to embrace austerity so severe it will lead to “a bigger GDP drop than that experienced during the Great Recession of 2008.”

But in an interview on Fox News Sunday this morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) threatened to oppose this must-pass bill unless Social Security benefits are taken away from millions of future retirees:

I’m not going to raise the debt ceiling unless we get serious about keeping the country from becoming Greece, saving Social Security and Medicare [sic]. So here’s what i would like: meaningful entitlement reform — not to turn Social Security into private accounts, not to take a voucher approach to Medicare — but, adjust the age for Social Security, CPI changes and means testing and look beyond the ten-year window. I cannot in good conscience raise the debt ceiling without addressing the long term debt problems of this country and I will not.

As Millhiser rightfully pointed out, this is nothing but "extortion, plain and simple." Graham's behavior is shameless and reckless and those are probably some of the kinder things you could say about it. What he omitted from his post is the fact that Sen. Dianne Feinstein was right there with him, pretending he's being reasonable with his demands on Social Security because it's not going to harm current seniors. I guess she thinks that people who aren't retirement age don't care about future benefit cuts or that current seniors don't care about their children. I've got news for her. She's wrong. It's also politically tone deaf for any Democrat to be going along with cuts to Social Security if they don't think they'll pay a price for it later.

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In the wake of the elementary school shooting in Newton, CT, Sen. Dianne Feinstein told Meet the Press host David Gregory that she plans to introduce a bill that would ban military style assault weapons on the first day of the new Congress.

FEINSTEIN: I can tell you that he is going to have a bill to lead on, because of this first day bill I'm going to introduce in the Senate and the same bill will be introduced in the House – a bill to ban assault weapons. It will ban the sale, transfer, the importation and the possession, not retroactively, but prospectively. And it will ban the same for big clips, drums or strips of more than ten bullets. So there will be a bill. We've been working on it now for a year.

We tried to take my bill from '94-2004 and perfect it. We believe we have. We exempt over 900 specific weapons that will not fall under the bill. But the purpose of this bill is to get just what Mayor Bloomberg said, weapons of war off the streets of our cities.

Feinstein brushed off the notion that it would not be possible to get the legislation through the Congress, noting that it had been done before in the face of stiff opposition and that she expected President Obama lend his support to the bill.

I guess time will tell. If having a member of Congress who is one of their own shot in the head wasn't enough to make the lot of them get over their fear of the NRA, I'm not sure if this shooting will finally be the straw that broke the camel's back or not. We're about to find out.

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When asked about our policy of releasing prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (DINO-CA) agrees with Rep. Pete Hoekstra that we should not be releasing anyone to a country with an al Qaeda presence.

SCHIEFFER: Dianne Feinstein , what about that, that we shouldn’t release anybody to a country where there’s an Al Qaida presence? Do you go along with that?

FEINSTEIN: Yes, I tend to agree with that, actually. And if you look at Yemen-- and we’re taking a good look at Yemen-- what you see is I think at least 24 or 28 are confirmed returns to the battlefield in Yemen. And there are a number of suspected.

If you combine the suspected and the confirmed, the number I have is 74 detainees have gone back into the fight. And I think that’s bad.

And here’s the reason. They come out of Gitmo and they are heroes in this world. This world is the only world that’s going to really be accepting of them. Therefore, the tendency is to go back. And I think the Gitmo experience is not one that leads itself to rehabilitation, candidly. I think it leads to....

SCHIEFFER: Let me -- let me ask, do you think that maybe we just ought to keep Gitmo open for a while and not release anybody that’s down there, or at least put them in some other place but not release them?

FEINSTEIN: Well, I agree with those that have said that Guantanamo has really been a recruiting tool for Al Qaida, that it has not been helpful to us. And I think that, you know, the Senate is now engaged in a huge study on the interrogation and detention of the some 33 high-value detainees. What happened to them, how were they treated? What success did the interrogation have? Were the laws followed? That kind of thing. And we should have the report completed within the next three months or so.

SCHIEFFER: All right.

FEINSTEIN: However, the problem is that this is very difficult. And I happen to know the prison system rather well, so I believe the safety of America is assured in the federal prison system. I don’t worry about the safety element.

SCHIEFFER: It sounds to me like what you’re saying here, Senator Feinstein, is that we ought to be very, very careful about releasing anybody right now. That seems to me your (inaudible).

FEINSTEIN: I think right now, until we sort this out, the answer is yes.

SCHIEFFER: All right. I want to thank both of you for being with us this morning. Very enlightening discussion.

Gee Senator, who would have ever thought torturing people would make them want to come back and kill us later? The Gitmo experience--isn't that lovely?

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September 15, 2009 PBS News Hour

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John Amato:

Nancy Pelosi is once again vindicated by the actions of the CIA and Dick Cheney. Darth Vader continually opens his mouth to defend his horrific actions, but as more information leaks out it's quite obvious that he had no regard for the rule of law or the Constitution. The new breaking story is that Cheney told the CIA to keep their mouths shut and not inform Congress of what they were up to. This should be reviewed to see if he broke the law.

Normally this would be a shocking revelation under any other administration, but with Bush and Cheney---this is the norm.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney directed the CIA eight years ago not to inform Congress about a nascent counterterrorism program that CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated in June, officials with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

Subsequent CIA directors did not inform Congress because the intelligence-gathering effort had not developed to the point that they believed merited a congressional briefing, said a former intelligence official and another government official familiar with Panetta's June 24 briefing to the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

Panetta did not agree. Upon learning of the program June 23 from within the CIA, Panetta terminated it and the next day called an emergency meeting with the House and Senate Intelligence committees to inform them of the program and that it was canceled.

From Fox News Sunday, Dianne Feinstein and John Cornyn are asked about the recent revelation that the CIA was asked by the Bush administration not to reveal one of their programs to members of Congress.

FEINSTEIN: Oh, I think this is a problem, obviously. This is a big problem, because the law is very clear. And I understand the need of the day, which was when America was in shock, when we had been hit in a way we’d never contemplated, where we had massive loss of life, where there was a major effort to be able to respond and -- but this -- see, I don’t -- I think you weaken your case when you go outside of the law.

Feinstein feels the concealment may have broken the law and has no problems with Attorney Gen. Holder appointing an independent I.G. to investigate the Bush administrations interrogation methods. Cornyn's response is predictable.

WALLACE: In our final moments, I want to turn to another subject, and this involves your role, Senator Feinstein, as chair of the Intelligence Committee.

CIA director Panetta briefed you recently on an 8-year-old program that he had stopped but that Congress had never been told about. Now there are reports that Vice President Cheney ordered the CIA not to tell Congress about it.

One, should Congress have been told about this program, which apparently was never fully implemented? And what do you make of the vice president’s apparent role in telling the CIA not to brief Congress?

FEINSTEIN: The answer is yes, Congress should have been told. We should have been briefed before the commencement of this kind of sensitive program.

Director Panetta did brief us two weeks ago -- I believe it was on the 24th of June -- said he had just learned about the program, described it to us, indicated that he had canceled it and, as had been reported, did tell us that he was told that the vice president had ordered that the program not be briefed to the Congress. This is...

WALLACE: And what do you think of that?

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From 60 Minutes April 12, 2009 Sen. Dianne Feinstein on support for the renewal of the assault weapons ban.

"You have lots and lots of Democrats who got support from the NRA this time, and so they agree with the NRA. They'll vote with the NRA," Stahl told Feinstein.

"I'm not going to disagree with that at all," the senator replied.

She admits she's facing daunting opposition. "The National Rifle Association essentially has a stranglehold on the Congress."

Asked if anybody from the Democratic Senate leadership or from the administration has asked her to back off, Feinstein said, "No. Nobody said a word to me."

And what about President Obama, who NRA supporters like to call the great "gun grabber"?

His Web site says he wants to make "the expired federal assault weapons ban permanent," but the White House doesn't seem to be interested in bringing it up - any time soon.

"There's some sense that the president has so many crisis issues on his plate right now that the idea of bringing up guns - which is considered part of the Culture Wars - would be such a diversion," Stahl told Feinstein.

"I agree with you. I wouldn't bring it up now," she replied.

Feinstein said she's going to hold off, for now, but vowed she would eventually push the issue. "I'll pick the time and the place, no question about that," she told Stahl.

You can watch the rest of the segment here: Gun Sales: Will The "Loophole" Close? From the article:

Just in the last four weeks, there have been at least eight separate deadly shooting sprees all across the country. Some of this can be linked to the recession since several of the gunmen had lost their jobs.

The recession is having an effect in another surprising way: in past downturns, people stocked up on things like canned soups. But this time, it's guns.

Even as the stock market has plummeted, shares in Smith & Wesson have nearly quadrupled since November, and sales of guns are going through the roof.