David Gregory violated law on news show?

[Newtons Bit]

I think the biggest problem is that I don't believe they could prove it was a functioning magazine.

I think the law in DC is really ******* stupid!

According to the letter, they had more than enough to prosecute. They had a tacit admittance of guilt by both Gregory and NBC.

 

[Ranb]

I suspect it is an 'add on' prosecution. That those actually charged were also charged with other weapons violations.

I saw nothing in DC law that said the mag ban was a secondary offense; a citation issued only if arrested for something else more serious. I suppose they might be treating it like that though.

When I lived in Hawaii, there was a hi-cap mag ban that was passed in 1992 and took effect in 1994. I heard the beat cops (who were mostly against the ban) were not arresting anyone for possession unless they were there for another reason. They treated it like a secondary offense even though it wasn't

The law also allowed hi-cap mags that were modified to less than ten rounds as long as they could not be readily restored to >10 rounds. The law did not define the term readily restore as it was applied to magazines. The legislature and police refused to define it and the courts would not do so until someone was arrested for possessing an inadequately modified magazine. I left in 1999 before anyone poor sap was used as a test case.

According to the letter, they had more than enough to prosecute. They had a tacit admittance of guilt by both Gregory and NBC.

If someone with a lower public profile had done this, you think the DC police would have a case for conspiracy?

What are the odds that Gregory will wave around a banned (in DC) firearm on his news show to promote a gun ban and claim it was within his 1st amendment rights to do so as a journalist?

Ranb

 

[Monketi Ghost]

That is quite disheartening. I am saddened to see that the laws of our nations capital no longer apply to everyone.

Hate to agree, but if it ain't legal it ain't legal. Some joker on a local small station would've been slapped hard.

Difference being, said joker wouldn't have access to a flotilla of lawyers.

 

[Unabogie]

I think we're all in agreement. Just as with Scooter Libby, when a Member in Good Standing breaks a law that the rest of us would be charged under and is not charged or is pardoned, it undermines justice and Gregory should have faced the consequences.

You can't have two tiers of justice or it all falls apart.

 

[Newtons Bit]

Hate to agree, but if it ain't legal it ain't legal. Some joker on a local small station would've been slapped hard.

Difference being, said joker wouldn't have access to a flotilla of lawyers.

This has little to do with power/lawyers/money and everything to do with bias. Anyone who was using that "prop" for an anti-gun-control point would have been charged.

 

[Polaris]

I think we're all in agreement. Just as with Scooter Libby, when a Member in Good Standing breaks a law that the rest of us would be charged under and is not charged or is pardoned, it undermines justice and Gregory should have faced the consequences.

You can't have two tiers of justice or it all falls apart.

Correct. Either it gets applied equally or the law is broken and it needs to be repealed with pardons.

 

[Monketi Ghost]

This has little to do with power/lawyers/money and everything to do with bias. Anyone who was using that "prop" for an anti-gun-control point would have been charged.

Nah. Just the power of lawyers is all I see no CT

 

[Newtons Bit]

Nah. Just the power of lawyers is all I see no CT

The case was a slam dunk: they have the magazine, they have FILM of David Gregory possessing it and they have statements by Gregory and others admitting to having done it. The statement by the AG even says all of this. What could a team of the best lawyers argue in a criminal court?

It's not a CT, it's bias.

 

[Ranb]

Slam dunk for arrest but not for the prosecutor. If I was the kind of elitist scumbag who would violate the law on live TV, I would make no statements to the police and have my lawyer tell the authorities that the magazine was a non-functioning prop. I would also make the real magazine unavailable to the authorities and substitute a fake one in the event a warrant was issued for it.

Ranb

 

[Newtons Bit]

Slam dunk for arrest but not for the prosecutor. If I was the kind of elitist scumbag who would violate the law on live TV, I would make no statements to the police and have my lawyer tell the authorities that the magazine was a non-functioning prop. I would also make the real magazine unavailable to the authorities and substitute a fake one in the event a warrant was issued for it.

Ranb

None of those things happened.

Letter from AG to Gregory's Lawyer:

I have also received and reviewed your letter to me of January 9, 2013, explaining the circumstances under which Mr. Gregory came into possession of the magazine

OAG also appreciates that the magazine was immediately returned to the source that NBC understood to be its lawful owner outside of the District and that the magazine in question, with NBC's assistance, has been surrendered to MPD.

The device in the host's possession on that broadcast was a magazine capable of holding up to 30 rounds of ammunition.

It's a slam dunk prosecution.

 

[Ranb]

Thanks. I did not see that in anything I read.

Ranb

I see that now dangit.

 

[Newtons Bit]

Thanks. I did not see that in anything I read.

Ranb

It was in your link

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/guns/2013/jan/11/miller-david-gregory-gets-scott-free/

 

[casebro]

Yes but has the law every survived the appeal process?

It seems to me to be a way of confiscating what had been legally owned property, up until the ban passed. No due process to that procedure. In Kalifornia, the large cap rules allow me to keep my big stuff, though can't transfer it, except out of state, through an approved dealer. But I can replace it with other large cap, even bigger, as it wears out. Another stupid gun law, eh?

 

[Ranb]

http://news.yahoo.com/david-gregory-dc-gun-law-magazine-meet-the-press-164519689.html

A federal judge has ordered the District of Columbia to release the affidavit stemming from the Metropolitan Police Department's investigation of David Gregory after the "Meet the Press" host displayed a high-capacity ammunition magazine on the air while taping the program in NBC's Washington, D.C., studio in 2012.

"That’s not how the average person is treated in D.C., where the technicalities of the gun laws are enforced with obsessive prosecutorial vigor," Jacobson wrote. "And that’s the point. We never wanted David Gregory prosecuted for violating the ridiculous gun law provision, we wanted public officials to be held accountable for the unequal application of the law."

Ranb