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Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) corrected NBC host David Gregory on Sunday after he repeated the National Rifle Association's (NRA) talking points in opposition to expanding gun background checks even though only 10 percent of the country agrees with the lobbying group.

During a panel discussion on NBC's Meet the Press, Gregory argued that "not a lot is about to be accomplished" even if the Senate succeeds in passing a bill to close the so-called gun show loophole and expand background checks to Internet sales.

"I disagree," Gillibrand insisted. "I think we have a very good start on beginning to crack down on gun crime. And the bottom line is the families of Newtown, the families all across America who lose children every single day, they deserve a vote, they deserve an answer, they deserve leadership out of Washington."

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) argued that the background check proposal "would serve primarily to limit the rights of law-abiding citizens, while doing little of anything to prevent tragedies like [Newtown] from occurring in the future."

Gregory asked Gillibrand if supporting gun control would be "tough" to do after she had touted a pro-NRA voting record during the 2008 election.

"That's why I know this bill will work," the New York Democrat explained. "It is making sure you protect Second Amendment rights. We're not undermining Second Amendment rights by saying criminals have to go through a background check before they can buy that weapon or straw purchasers and trafficker can't be stemming their guns straight into these communities."

"But the NRA doesn't believe that," Gregory interrupted. "The NRA does not agree."

"This is not about the NRA!" Gillibrand exclaimed. "This is about families! This is about America! Seventy-percent of NRA members like the background check bill, like the straw purchase bill. They even support things like assault weapons ban."

"So if you're talking about people and if you're talking about America and what Americans want, Americans want these reforms. We just saw that mother who lost her child, you cannot do nothing in the face of that tragedy!"

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Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R) on Sunday said that he opposed a bill to close the so-called gun show loophole and expand background checks to Internet gun sales because only better mental health laws will ensure that the Newtown mass shooting victims "did not die in vain."

"In my meeting with the Sandy Hook families, they told me that -- and of course, who wouldn't have sympathy and empathy for these people who have suffered a terrible loss -- but what they told me is that they wanted to make sure their loved one did not die in vain, that something good would come out of this," Cornyn told Fox News host Chris Wallace. "And so I think -- that's why I'm focused like a laser on the mental health component."

"But forgive me, sir," Wallace interrupted. "They are focused on tougher gun control. Specifically, the background check."

"Well for example, [Newtown shooter] Adam Lanza stole his mother's guns," Cornyn explained. "A background check would not have stopped that problem, that incident. A background check should have stopped James Holmes in Tucson, it should have stopped the Virginia Tech shooter."

"In other words, I think the mental health issue is the common element that we ought to be focused on, and I think we can do some good things," the Texas Republican added. "But I'm not for symbolism over substance. I think we can't just pat ourselves on the back and say we're going to pass some enhanced penalties for trafficking or other issues or background checks when they don't really go to solve the problems that cause these terrible tragedies."

Cornyn pointed out that the bipartisan legislation proposed by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) would not have prevented any of the four most recent mass shootings.

"The [Newtown] parents say that doesn't matter," Wallace noted.

"Well, what matters to me is that we not just engage in a symbolic act and pat ourselves on the back and say we've done something good and left the problem unsolved," Cornyn insisted. "I would like to try to solve the problem by focusing on the common element of these recent tragedies, which is the mental health issue."

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Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe is one of 14 Republicans who have pledged to filibuster any sort of new gun restrictions and as MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell noted, he now apparently believes enough time has passed that he feels free to insult the parents of the murdered children from Sandy Hook elementary school.

I guess Inhofe believes only senators who have an A+ rating from the NRA are allowed to talk about gun control.

James Inhofe: Gun Debate Has Nothing To Do With Families Of Newtown Victims:

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said Tuesday that the gun control debate doesn't have anything to do with the families of the Newtown, Conn., shooting victims, and that the only reason those families think it does is because President Barack Obama told them it did.

Eleven family members of Newtown victims were in Washington on Tuesday, meeting privately with senators to urge them to support a forthcoming gun package that would impose tighter background checks, crack down on gun trafficking and enhance school safety measures. Speaking to a handful of reporters, Inhofe said he feels bad for those families because they're being used as pawns in a political fight.

"See, I think it's so unfair of the administration to hurt these families, to make them think this has something to do with them when, in fact, it doesn't," Inhofe said.

When it was suggested that the families of Newtown victims actually believe the gun debate pertains to them, Inhofe said, "Well, that's because they've been told that by the president."

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As the families of those who were killed in the Newtown massacre prepare to head to Congress to push for stricter gun control laws, I've got to wonder if any of those members watched this heart-wrenching interview from 60 Minutes this Sunday.

You can watch the entire interview at their site, but I wanted to share the very end of the segment and if this doesn't just break your heart, it's made of stone.

Newtown families voice support for gun control:

Scott Pelley: Do any of you fear that after only four months the impact of this on the Congress is beginning to fade, and the memory of how we felt on that day is beginning to fade?

Francine Wheeler: Well, people do change because the country goes in different places. But we're gonna bring it right back, so that America can see. Four months, to them, it feels like it just happened a moment ago. And yet--

Scott Pelley: To you.

Francine Wheeler: And yet it's been years since I've seen my son. OK? So we're just-- we're not going anywhere. We're here. And we're going to be here.

Jimmy Greene: We don't get to move on. We don't have the benefit of turning the page to another piece of legislation and having another debate and playing politics the same we we've been doing. We don't have that benefit. We're gonna live with this for the rest of our lives. So our legislators need to hear us.

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I didn't think it was possible, but the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan contradicted herself in such an obvious, head-spinning manner on this Sunday's Meet the Press, that it was even too much for guest host Chuck Todd to stomach.

Here's what she said about gun control and why it didn't get through the Congress:

PEGGY NOONAN: I think a big part of this story is that people don't trust Congress. After Newtown, there was a great bubbling feeling of, "My goodness, there must be at least some things we can do legislatively to make this whole gun situation better." If the Congress, if the Senate had moved quickly on discrete, small bills, having to do with background checks, I mean quickly, in the weeks after Newtown--

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Conservative radio host Dana Loesch on Thursday argued that classifying certain guns as assault rifles was silly because "if you stab someone with a spoon it can be qualified as an assault weapon."

Following Thursday's revelations that Newtown shooter Adam Lanza had fired over 150 rounds with an AR-15 in less than five minutes, Loesch appeared on CNN to argue that it was a "false premise" that Lanza had used an assault weapon.

"We are talking about semi-automatic weapons," the former Breitbart editor explained. "I do not own a military-style assault weapon. Just because, what, a firearm looks scary then you call it military assault? Do you realize that one of my children has a BB gun that looks like an AR-15? Is that going to be considered a military-style assault weapon? It sounds silly and uneducated."

CNN host Piers Morgan noted that Lanza had "in the space of 300 seconds using an AR-15, killed 26 people. He had magazines with 30 bullets."

"Anyone can reload!" Loesch shouted.

"Are you telling me that doesn't qualify as an assault weapon?" Morgan asked.

"By the technical definition, no, Piers," Loesch shot back. "Oh, anything can be qualified as an assault weapon. If you stab someone with a spoon, it can be qualified as an assault weapon."

"So you're equating stabbing someone with a spoon with shooting dead 26 people?" Morgan wondered.

Liberal CNN contributor Van Jones said that Loesch's argument was part of the "conscious strategy on the part of the pro-gun folks to constantly bring things back around to things that don't make any sense."

"You're talking about people stabbing people with spoons," Jones observed. "If that were the problem that we had in America -- stabbing people with spoons -- we wouldn't be talking about this right now. What we're talking about is funeral after funeral after funeral. What we're talking about is children being gunned down. And what we're talking about is common-sense measures, not confiscating guns."

(h/t: Media Matters)

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NBC host David Gregory on Sunday confronted National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre for "thwarting the will" of the public by opposing universal background checks while a vast majority of the public supports them.

Following an interview where New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that he planned to use part of his personal fortune to defeat candidates who oppose gun control, Gregory asked LaPierre if he was "preparing to arm politically people" support gun rights?

"We have people sending us five, 10, 15 dollar checks, saying, 'Stand up to this guy that says we can only have three bullets,'" the NRA chief explained. "Stand up to this guy that says ridiculous things like the NRA wants firearms with nukes on them. I mean, it's insane the stuff he says."

"Ninety percent of people want background checks," Gregory pointed out. "Among people who own guns, 85 percent support [background checks]. Are you thwarting the will of the American people by standing in opposition to universal background checks?"

"No, not at all," LaPierre insisted. "Because here's the thing, the whole thing -- universal checks -- is a dishonest premise. There's not a bill on the Hill that provide a universal checks, criminals aren't going to be checked, they're not going to do this. The shooters in Tucson, in Aurora, in Newtown -- they're not going to be checked, they're unrecognizable."

The pro-gun lobbyist suggested that the NRA would even oppose the current background check system if Congress tried to pass it again today because "it's a speed bump for the law abiding."

"It slows down the law abiding and does nothing to anybody else," he insisted.

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President George W. Bush's former chief strategist Matthew Dowd is slamming the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) for snubbing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) while inviting former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), who he asserts "wasn't competent enough to keep a Fox News contract."

Wall Street Journal editor Paul Gigot on Sunday told an ABC News panel that CPAC had made a mistake by not inviting Christie after he pushed Congress for Hurricane Sandy relief funds and backed some gun-control legislation following last year's mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

"If I were CPAC, I would have invited Christie and let him say what he wanted on guns or anything else," Gigot insisted. "And if you disagree with him, boo him or what have you. But this is a time that the Republican Party needs to have a debate, and a pretty raucous debate."

"CPAC, to me, has totally diminished its credibility as an organization," Dowd agreed. "And you invite Sarah Palin, who wasn't competent enough to keep a Fox News contract? But she's invited to CPAC meeting?"

Democratic strategist James Carville, however, welcomed the CPAC move as something that could help Democrats by elevating fringe elements in the Republican Party.

"Any day that you have more Sarah Palin and less Chris Christie is a good day for James Carville," he quipped. "I'm all for it!"

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Under the category of "Doh! We knew that," a former FBI profiler on Sunday warned that some gun advocates were making a mistake by rushing to blame the December mass shooting of 20 children in Connecticut on violent video games.

Following a CBS News report that investigators had found a "trove" of video games in the home of Newtown shooter Adam Lanza, conservatives like Glenn Beck jumped to the conclusion that the games had been a "gateway drug" to the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

But during a panel discussion on Sunday, former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole said evidence did not support that theory.

"It's my experience that video games do not cause violence," O'Toole told CBS News. "However, it is one of the risk variables when we do a threat assessment for the risk to act out violently."

"It's important that I point out that as a threat assessment and as a former FBI profiler, we don't see these as the cause violence," she added. "We see them as sources of fueling ideation that's already there."

Texas A&M International University psychology professor Christopher Ferguson pointed out that youth violence had recently declined to the lowest level in 40 years at a time when video games had become more violent.

"I think we have to put this discussion, to some extent, in historical perspective," Ferguson explained. "And when new media come out that they tend to go through a period of what we call moral panic, in which they are blamed for all manner of societal ills. And probably the best example of this was from the 1950s, when we had Congress and psychiatrists who were claiming that comic books were responsible for not only juvenile delinquency, but homosexuality."

"We're in a mode of worry about -- or panicking about this type of media. We may do some putting the cart before the horse, and we may see some people sort of starting with a conclusion and trying to assemble data in a very selective way to try to support that conclusion."

A 2002 study published by the U.S. Secret Service found that only 12 percent of perpetrators of school violence had an interest in violent video games. But 37 percent “exhibited an interest in violence in their own writings, such as poems, essays or journal entries.”

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A pastor in Connecticut has apologized for taking part in a vigil for the victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School because his church does not allow worshiping with other faiths.

Rev. Rob Morris of Newtown's Christ the King Lutheran Church offered a letter of apology after he was reprimanded by church president Matthew Harrison for "joint worship with other religions," according to the Religion News Service.

King Lutheran Church is a member of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which bans ministers from praying alongside Muslims, Jews or even other Christians.

Morris had provided the closing benediction at the Dec. 16 vigil in Newtown.

"There is sometimes a real tension between wanting to bear witness to Christ and at the same time avoiding situations which may give the impression that our differences with respect to who God is, who Jesus is, how he deals with us, and how we get to heaven, really don't matter in the end," Harrison wrote in his letter of reprimand. "There will be times in this crazy world when, for what we believe are all the right reasons, we may step over the scriptural line."

Harrison argued that “the presence of prayers and religious readings” meant that Morris should have not participated in the Newtown vigil.

In his apology letter, Morris explained that he had spoken to his supervisor before participating in the vigil but "I made my own decision."

“I believed my participation to be, not an act of joint worship, but an act of community chaplaincy," he said.

Missouri Synod's Rev. David H. Benke was also suspended for about two years after he participated in an interfaith service with a Muslim imam, a rabbi, a Catholic cardinal and others 12 days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.