During the April 7 airing of ABC’s The View, host Jedediah Bila countered anti-gun arguments by asking why law-abiding citizens should be denied an AR-15 if the criminal who attacks them is armed with one?

Bila’s comments followed Whoopi Goldberg’s assertion that Sandy Hook families are suing Bushmaster for advertising AR-15s as “a normal gun for regular people.” She said people involved in the case are looking at the gun from another perspective, saying “It should only be used by the military.”

Bila responded:

I know a lot of people who have this gun. It’s semiautomatic, it’s not a military grade weapon. The military uses automatic weapons. But these are guns that a lot of people I know have to protect themselves. And they feel that a lot of criminals have access to these kinds of weapons and they want to have that same right. They say, ‘If a criminal can go in a dark alley and get one of these guns, and I’m sitting in my home and I’m an elderly person or a single mom, or I’m looking to protect my family, why can’t I have access to these same types of weapons?’

Host Joy Behar tried to counter by saying, “Why do they need arsenals of them? If you’re going to shoot one criminal all you need is a handgun.”

Bila responded simply, “I’m not a gun girl. But I’ll defend their Second Amendment rights.”

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.