Taking a break from defending his state’s restrictive voter ID law in court, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson spoke at a Heritage Foundation panel on Thursday regarding the dire need to prevent the threat of voter fraud. To illustrate, he offered a hypothetical in which a man votes under a stolen identity…by using a fraudulent voter ID card:

WILSON: The ability for someone to come in and, through fraud, dilute the voting pool is very present. I want to be able to give our government the ability to combat that, to give them the tools. It is very difficult to prove a negative. If Alan Wilson goes in and uses a fraudulent voter ID card under the name of John Smith and I vote under John Smith’s name and then leave the polling place, you cannot go back in time and prove the negative. It is impossible. It is very difficult to catch somebody in the act. But I hear countless stories of people who witnessed that.

Watch it:

In-person voter fraud like the type Wilson claims to prevent is extremely rare. It is so rare, in fact, that a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than commit voter fraud. Even the Supreme Court could only identify one example of in-person voter fraud in the past 143 years in their 2009 decision upholding a voter ID law.

By contrast, a recent Brennan Center report found that nearly 500,000 voters — mostly low-income and minority individuals — in the ten states with voter ID laws stand to be disenfranchised.

Wilson has sued the Department of Justice for blocking South Carolina’s voter ID law, arguing, “The changes have neither the purpose nor will they have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority.”

According to the ACLU’s estimate, 180,000 voters will be affected by the South Carolina law, with minority voters hit hardest by the new requirements.

This isn’t the first time Wilson’s hypotheticals have fallen flat. After he claimed over 900 dead voters cast ballots in South Carolina, an investigation by the State Election Commission found no evidence to back him up. Wilson has continued to insist that the threat of dead voters is real, and repeated the statistic at the Heritage Foundation on Thursday.

A group of Democratic senators are bucking President Obama and calling on Congress to pass new legislation that would establish federal restrictions on large capacity gun magazines. Identical to a separate bill introduced by amendment sponsor Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), the senators’ amendment to the Cybersecurity Act would ban the sale or transfer of large capacity feeders like magazines, belts, feed stripes and drums that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition with the exception of .22 caliber rim fire ammunition.

The amendment was introduced amid growing outcry from police and gun control advocates who want Washington to take a stand on gun control. New York City Mayor Bloomberg prominently demanded action hours after the Aurora theater shooting. The White House pledged to strengthen existing gun rules but has since clarified that the administration will not promote new legislation.

24-year-old James Holmes, the prime suspect in the Aurora shooting, purchased a 100 round drum magazine. Jared Loughner, who shot former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) in 2011 along with 18 others, used an extended magazine that held 33 bullets, and police found two more 15-round magazines in his pockets. Under the federal assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, these two killers could not have legally purchased these large capacity ammunition feeding devices. On the state level, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York all prohibit the sale of high capacity magazines.

In a floor speech supporting the new amendment, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) attempted to find common ground with gun rights advocates, conceding that liberals in the 1980s and 90s “basically felt there was no right to bear arms,” prompting an extreme reaction from the pro-gun movement. Schumer stressed the need to disprove the misconception that “The Chuck Schumers of the world want to take away your gun, even if it’s the hunting rifle your uncle Willy gave you when you were 14.”

Calling for “rational” gun control measures, Schumer said liberals need to “make it clear once and for all that is not our goal…the Second Amendment does matter, and if you’re an average normal American citizen you have the right to bear arms.”

Rep Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), whose husband was killed in a 1993 mass shooting on the Long Island Railroad, has proposed a similar ban on high-capacity magazines in Congress but does not expect it to pass.