David Gregory Under Police Investigation Over Gun Magazine On 'Meet The Press'

[listopencil]

I found this to be hilarious, and I hope he is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

David Gregory Under Police Investigation Over Gun Magazine On 'Meet The Press'

Posted: 12/26/2012 9:16 am EST | Updated: 12/26/2012 1:41 pm EST


UPDATE: NBC News had requested and was denied permission to use a high capacity magazine on "Meet the Press." Legal Insurrection's William A. Jacobson looked into an email allegedly from the Metropolitan Police Department which said that the network contacted the police before the segment. The MPD's Aziz Alali confirmed it, telling Jacobson:

"NBC contacted the Metropolitan Police Department inquiring if they could utilize a high capacity magazine for this segment. NBC was informed that that possession of a high capacity magazine is not permissible and the request was denied."

EARLIER: David Gregory is being investigated by police over the gun magazine that he showed on Sunday's "Meet the Press."

Gregory held up what appeared to be a 30-round gun magazine during his contentious interview with the NRA's Wayne LaPierre. He was asking LaPierre whether fewer victims would have died in the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School if the gunman had not had access to so many bullets.

Araz Alali, police officer and spokesman, confirmed to Politico on Tuesday that the Metropolitan Police Department is looking into “The 'Meet the Press,' David Gregory incident.” "There are D.C. code violations, D.C. code restrictions on guns, ammunition. We are investigating this matter. Beyond the scope of that, I can’t comment any further," he said.

The code in question says, “No person in the District shall possess, sell, or transfer any large capacity ammunition feeding device regardless of whether the device is attached to a firearm," and has been mentioned by numerous conservatives making the argument against Gregory.

CORRECTION: The headline has been updated to say that Gregory was holding a gun magazine, not a clip, on "Meet the Press.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...03&ir=Politics

[Chief Gump]

Originally Posted by Garcia Bronco

If it was attached to a gun sure. I could see a citation, but if I were on the jury there is no way I am sending this man to jail for a prop on TV.

I think the jury is just supposed to say whether he is guilty or not guilty. It is up to the judge to determine what the guy should get in terms of punishment. I could be wrong though.

A. Did defendent have a high capacity magazine? Check
B. Was he in Washington? Check

Guilty

[fan4ever]

Now that I've seen his dancing, I hope they throw the book at that douchebag.

[mlyonsd]

Since NBC asked permission to use the magazine but was turned down they definitely should throw the book at him.

[theelusiveeightrop]

Who is David Gregory?

[listopencil]

Originally Posted by Garcia Bronco

If it was attached to a gun sure. I could see a citation, but if I were on the jury there is no way I am sending this man to jail for a prop on TV.

How would you feel about fining him?

[listopencil]

Updated: 12/27/2012 7:47 am EST:
D.C. police told Politico that David Gregory's display of a gun magazine on "Meet the Press" was illegal, even if the magazine was empty.

A spokesperson made the statement after TMZ reported Wednesday that "Meet the Press" was given permission to use an empty gun magazine on-air. The site said that according to sources, the show contacted the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives before the segment. A D.C. police official told ATF that NBC News could show the magazine.

D.C. police are now saying that the official cited in that report gave inaccurate information.

Earlier, it was also reported that the network had requested and was denied permission to use the magazine directly by the D.C. police. Legal Insurrection's William A. Jacobson confirmed the report with the Metropolitan Police Department's Aziz Alali, who said:

"NBC contacted the Metropolitan Police Department inquiring if they could utilize a high capacity magazine for this segment. NBC was informed that that possession of a high capacity magazine is not permissible and the request was denied."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_2364637.html

[listopencil]

Cops told NBC not to use gun clip

By KATIE GLUECK | 12/26/12 12:14 PM EST Updated: 12/27/12 9:20 AM EST

NBC was told by the Washington police that it was “not permissible” to show a high-capacity gun magazine on air before Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” according to a statement Wednesday from the cops.

“NBC contacted [the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department] inquiring if they could utilize a high capacity magazine for their segment,” Gwendolyn Crump, a police spokeswoman, said in an email. “NBC was informed that possession of a high capacity magazine is not permissible and their request was denied. This matter is currently being investigated."

That statement comes a day after the police department told POLITICO that an investigation is underway to determine whether any city laws were violated on a Sunday segment of “Meet the Press.” During the show, host David Gregory displayed what appeared to be a 30-round gun magazine while interviewing Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association.

“There are D.C. code violations, D.C. code restrictions on guns, ammunition,” police officer and spokesman Araz Alali told POLITICO Tuesday. “We are investigating this matter.”

NBC declined to comment.

The statement from the police department was obtained earlier Wednesday by Washington’s ABC7/News Channel 8.

http://www.politico.com/story/2012/1...lip-85497.html

[listopencil]

December 28, 2012 5:30 P.M.
Laws Are for Little People
And not for David Gregory. By Mark Steyn
http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...ark-steyn?pg=1

A week ago on NBC’s Meet the Press, David Gregory brandished on screen a high-capacity magazine. To most media experts, a “high-capacity magazine” means an ad-stuffed double issue of Vanity Fair with the triple-page perfume-scented pullouts. But apparently in America’s gun-nut gun culture of gun-crazed gun kooks, it’s something else entirely, and it was this latter kind that Mr. Gregory produced in order to taunt Wayne LaPierre of the NRA. As the poster child for America’s gun-crazed gun-kook gun culture, Mr. LaPierre would probably have been more scared by the host waving around a headily perfumed Vanity Fair. But that was merely NBC’s first miscalculation. It seems a high-capacity magazine is illegal in the District of Columbia, and the flagrant breach of D.C. gun laws is now under investigation by the police.

This is, declared NYU professor Jay Rosen, “the dumbest media story of 2012.” Why? Because, as CNN’s Howard Kurtz breezily put it, everybody knows David Gregory wasn’t “planning to commit any crimes.”

So what? Neither are the overwhelming majority of his fellow high-capacity-magazine-owning Americans. Yet they’re expected to know, as they drive around visiting friends and family over Christmas, the various and contradictory gun laws in different jurisdictions. Ignorantia juris non excusat is one of the oldest concepts in civilized society: Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Back when there was a modest and proportionate number of laws, that was just about doable. But in today’s America there are laws against everything, and any one of us at any time is unknowingly in breach of dozens of them. And in this case NBC were informed by the D.C. police that it would be illegal to show the thing on TV, and they went ahead and did it anyway: You’ll never take me alive, copper! You’ll have to pry my high-capacity magazine from my cold dead fingers! When the D.C. SWAT team, the FBI, and the ATF take out NBC News and the whole building goes up in one almighty fireball, David Gregory will be the crazed loon up on the roof like Jimmy Cagney in White Heat: “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” At last, some actual must-see TV on that lousy network.

But, even if we’re denied that pleasure, the “dumbest media story of 2012” is actually rather instructive. David Gregory intended to demonstrate what he regards as the absurdity of America’s lax gun laws. Instead, he’s demonstrating the ever greater absurdity of America’s non-lax laws. His investigation, prosecution, and a sentence of 20–30 years with eligibility for parole after ten (assuming Mothers Against High-Capacity Magazines don’t object) would teach a far more useful lesson than whatever he thought he was doing by waving that clip under LaPierre’s nose.

To Howard Kurtz & Co., it’s “obvious” that Gregory didn’t intend to commit a crime. But, in a land choked with laws, “obviousness” is one of the first casualties — and “obviously” innocent citizens have their “obviously” well-intentioned actions criminalized every minute of the day. Not far away from David Gregory, across the Virginia border, eleven-year-old Skylar Capo made the mistake of rescuing a woodpecker from the jaws of a cat and nursing him back to health for a couple of days. For her pains, a federal Fish & Wildlife gauleiter accompanied by state troopers descended on her house, charged her with illegal transportation of a protected species, issued her a $535 fine, and made her cry. Why is it so “obvious” that David Gregory deserves to be treated more leniently than a sixth grader? Because he’s got a TV show and she hasn’t?

Anything involving guns is even less amenable to “obviousness.” A few years ago, Daniel Brown was detained at LAX while connecting to a Minneapolis flight because traces of gunpowder were found on his footwear. His footwear was combat boots. As the name suggests, the combat boots were returning from combat — eight months of it, in Iraq’s bloody and violent al-Anbar province. Above the boots he was wearing the uniform of a staff sergeant in the USMC Reserve Military Police and was accompanied by all 26 members of his unit, also in uniform. Staff Sergeant Brown doesn’t sound like an “obvious” terrorist. But the TSA put him on the no-fly list anyway. If it’s not “obvious” to the government that a serving member of the military has any legitimate reason for being around ammunition, why should it be “obvious” that a TV host has?

Three days after scofflaw Gregory committed his crime, a bail hearing was held in Massachusetts for Andrew Despres, 20, who’s charged with trespassing and possession of ammunition without a firearms license. Mr. Despres was recently expelled from Fitchburg State University and was returning to campus to pick up his stuff. Hence the trespassing charge. At the time of his arrest, he was wearing a “military-style ammunition belt.” Hence, the firearms charge.

His mom told WBZ that her son purchased the belt for $20 from a punk website and had worn it to class every day for two years as a “fashion statement.” He had no gun with which to fire the bullets. Nevertheless, Fitchburg police proudly displayed the $20 punk-website ammo belt as if they’d just raided the Fitchburg mafia’s armory, and an obliging judge ordered Mr. Despres held on $50,000 bail. Why should there be one law for Meet the Press and another for Meet Andrew Despres? Because David Gregory throws better cocktail parties?

The argument for letting him walk rests on his membership of a protected class — the media. Notwithstanding that (per Gallup) 54 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the NRA while only 40 percent have any trust in the media, the latter regard themselves as part of the ruling class. Which makes the rest of you the ruled. Laws are for the little people — and little people need lots of little laws, ensnaring them at every turn.

This is all modern life is. Ernest Hemingway had a six-toed cat. The cat begat. (Eat your heart out, Doctor Seuss.) So descendants of his six-toed cat still live at the Hemingway home in Key West. Tourists visit the property. Thus, the Department of Agriculture is insisting that the six-toed cats are an “animal exhibit” like the tigers at the zoo, and therefore come under federal regulation requiring each to be housed in an individual compound with “elevated resting surfaces,” “electric wire,” and a night watchman. Should David Gregory be treated more leniently than a domestic cat just because when Obama tickles his tummy he licks the president’s hand and purrs contentedly?

There are two possible resolutions: Gregory can call in a favor from some Obama consigliere who’ll lean on the cops to disappear the whole thing. If he does that, he’ll be contributing to the remorseless assault on a bedrock principle of free societies — equality before the law. Laws either apply to all of us or none of us. If they apply only to some, they’re not laws but caprices — and all tyranny is capricious.

Or he can embrace the role in which fate has cast him. Sometimes a society becomes too stupid to survive. Eleven-year-old girls fined for rescuing woodpeckers, serving Marines put on the no-fly list, and fifth-generation family cats being ordered into separate compounds with “electric wire” fencing can all testify to how near that point America is. But nothing “raises awareness” like a celebrity spokesman. Step forward, David Gregory! Dare the prosecutor to go for the death penalty — and let’s make your ammo the non-shot heard round the world!

[lostcause]

Mark Steyn has some great points in that article about the misuse of draconian legislation. He loses me when he starts into an attack on the media (which he is a member of). He also brings up a gallup poll about more people trusting the NRA than the "media", which is interesting. I find both to be corner stones of the constitution, one for the 1st amendment and the other for the 2nd, though it makes sense why they would be at odds at times.

I do think that Gregory should be prosecuted for possession of an illegal magazine and I am definitely a press and media supporter.

[CrazyPhuD]

Originally Posted by verbaljitsu

It is hard to see how Gregory would not be found guilty of breaking DC's code.
The penalty is up to a $1,000.00 fine and up to 1 year in prison. He would also be required to register as a Gun Offender.

His remarks that "this is a 30 round magazine" are not hearsay and are definitely usable against him in court.

Penalties: DC ST § 7-2507.06
Magazine Ban: DC ST § 7-2506.01
Gun Offender Registry: DC ST § 7-2508.01

Simply put the DA won't prosecute and unfortunately we can't force him to. The reason that he won't prosecute is that in the end it would result in the invalidation of the standard capacity magazine ban that DC has. Why? Because sending him to jail for showing it on air would likely be a 1A violation of his freedom of press rights. And if it violates his 1A rights then what does every other conviction for possession of standard capacity magazines mean for the equal treatment under the law of the rest of the citizens. Not to mention the 2A violation the ban likely is.

It would be a Pyrrhic victory for the DA to file charges, which is why he won't. But the fact that he won't also opens up 14A cases for anyone else charged in DC for possession. In short, whether the DA prosecutes or not, David Gregory just likely invalidated the magazine ban in DC. It may take some time to sort it's way through the courts but I would expect it to happen.

[listopencil]

Originally Posted by CrazyPhuD

Simply put the DA won't prosecute and unfortunately we can't force him to. The reason that he won't prosecute is that in the end it would result in the invalidation of the standard capacity magazine ban that DC has. Why? Because sending him to jail for showing it on air would likely be a 1A violation of his freedom of press rights. And if it violates his 1A rights then what does every other conviction for possession of standard capacity magazines mean for the equal treatment under the law of the rest of the citizens. Not to mention the 2A violation the ban likely is.

It would be a Pyrrhic victory for the DA to file charges, which is why he won't. But the fact that he won't also opens up 14A cases for anyone else charged in DC for possession. In short, whether the DA prosecutes or not, David Gregory just likely invalidated the magazine ban in DC. It may take some time to sort it's way through the courts but I would expect it to happen.

I'm not familiar with that at all, and I'm digging around with Google but not finding much. Can you explain this for me?

[CrazyPhuD]

Originally Posted by listopencil

I'm not familiar with that at all, and I'm digging around with Google but not finding much. Can you explain this for me?

Ok here's the 1A bit, we have the freedom of press. There is actual news value for him to show his viewers what a 30rd magazine is. People who've never seen one want to know. They asked the PD and the PD said no(not surprisingly). But there is a valid press freedom to show it. And if one looks at it, not really a valid criminal reason for the PD to deny them or frankly prohibit possession at all. If this went to trial I would be that 1A freedom of press would trump the magazine possession prohibition.

2A is obvious, since it now applies to the states and you have a right to bear arms(and their accessories), the government can't just prohibit things because they don't like them. Right now the courts are applying intermediate scrutiny to 2A cases but there is a real likely hood with the recent cases that they will up grade to strict scrutiny.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny

When that happens most of the gun laws are going to be KO'd as 2A violations because the government can't show a compelling reason for it!

as for the 14A issue, it all comes about to equal under the law, if there isn't a compelling reason to jail a reporter over a magazine is there really a compelling reason to jail a regular citizen merely for possession of something that likely won't be used in a crime? Am I not entitled to be treated the same as a reporter? You end up treating him differently under the law because it's a 1A issue versus Joe Citizen and it being a 2A issue.

That's a rough 10K feet outline of some of the issues.

[A Salt Weapon]

CrazyPhuD: excellent analysis.
Posted via Mobile Device

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by lostcause

I do think that Gregory should be prosecuted for possession of an illegal magazine and I am definitely a press and media supporter.

I'm not. They're just as bought as our politicians. You have to dig for what they leave out.

[listopencil]

Originally Posted by CrazyPhuD

Ok here's the 1A bit, we have the freedom of press. There is actual news value for him to show his viewers what a 30rd magazine is. People who've never seen one want to know. They asked the PD and the PD said no(not surprisingly). But there is a valid press freedom to show it. And if one looks at it, not really a valid criminal reason for the PD to deny them or frankly prohibit possession at all. If this went to trial I would be that 1A freedom of press would trump the magazine possession prohibition.

2A is obvious, since it now applies to the states and you have a right to bear arms(and their accessories), the government can't just prohibit things because they don't like them. Right now the courts are applying intermediate scrutiny to 2A cases but there is a real likely hood with the recent cases that they will up grade to strict scrutiny.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny

When that happens most of the gun laws are going to be KO'd as 2A violations because the government can't show a compelling reason for it!

as for the 14A issue, it all comes about to equal under the law, if there isn't a compelling reason to jail a reporter over a magazine is there really a compelling reason to jail a regular citizen merely for possession of something that likely won't be used in a crime? Am I not entitled to be treated the same as a reporter? You end up treating him differently under the law because it's a 1A issue versus Joe Citizen and it being a 2A issue.

That's a rough 10K feet outline of some of the issues.

Thank you. That is really intriguing, and not anything I had ever considered or even been aware of before.