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Feds and media jump to David Gregory’s defense as race card goes missing

Feds and media jump to David Gregory’s defense as race card goes missing

It must be nice to have friends in high places

Wow, isn’t this convenient.

An unnamed ATF official hopes that David Gregory and NBC News do not get prosecuted for violating D.C.’s clear law prohibiting the possession or transfer of high capacity ammunition magazines because it’s all just a misunderstanding (h/t The Patriot Perspective):

But ABC News has learned from an official at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives that NBC had reached out to the federal agency on Friday for advice before displaying the weaponry.

According to the ATF official, the agency noted that ATF doesn’t enforce D.C. gun laws, but agreed to put the question to a couple of Washington police officers who’ve worked with the agency in the past.

The D.C. officers advised the ATF spokesman that Gregory could display the magazine, provided it was empty, the source said.

That turned out to be bad advice, as conservative media and gun rights activists were first to note. The ATF official describes this as a “misunderstanding,” and says he hopes DC police will not bring charges.

Seriously, NBC News relied upon what some police officer told ATF which told NBC News? Wouldn’t anyone with half a brain reach out to the D.C. Police directly?

Yes, of course, that’s exactly what NBC News did, it contacted the Metropolitan Police Department directly and was told that it was against the law and they were not permitted to use the magazine on the television show. Yet NBC News did it anyway, and now the defense is that someone told someone who told us it was okay?

That’s no “misunderstanding.” Also, NBC has a legal department, did the show contact that department which would have found the answer pretty easily?

And anyway, the law does not require a knowing violation.

Would ABC News or any of the other media outlets dragged to the story treat Fox News this way? Or a Republican?  Or Wayne LaPierre?

The media is circling the wagons around NBC News, as Politico documents, Media disdain for the David Gregory story:

Some political and media types weren’t impressed by headlines this week reporting that D.C. police are investigating the alleged display of a gun magazine on NBC’s Meet the Press. They took to the Internet with their disdain for the story.

Notice another thing missing from the media treatment?

All the usual suspects who play the race and the white privilege cards against Republicans are silent.

David Gregory Quickmeme 2

(created by Legal Insurrection via Quickmeme)

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Comments

Typical lefties…look to the federal government instead of local authorities for assistance.

Joan Of Argghh | December 27, 2012 at 8:36 am

n.b to Politico: “Disdain” is a classist code word. We little people are apparently always “outraged” and the elites are merely suffering indigestion?

The MSM is elitist AND racist in their little, mean hearts. They see it everywhere because they project it everywhere. They are convinced that the world is as they experience it within the womb of DC twaddle-class pundits.

Yah…no…

I call BS top to bottom.

You don’t get “permission” or “advice” from ANYBODY to avoid a strict liability law. They are kind of…how should we put it…STRICT!

This is like pleading you had the minor’s mommy’s permission when you committed statutory rape. It does NOT avail as a defense, and it DOES just make you look both more guilty and more creepy.

Is it true that “ignorance of the law is no excuse”?

    Micha Elyi in reply to ETPaws. | December 27, 2012 at 12:38 pm

    “Ignorantia juris non excusat.”

    But latin is an old, dead language, older even than the US Constitution and we know from the Left that it doesn’t count because of its age. Plus there’s the whole Dead White Males factor.

    Think about what a burden having to know the law would put on the functional illiterates the government’s own schools produce every year. Could they read the entire federal code plus the regulations published in the Federal Register in a year of sitting 8 hours a day every day? I doubt it. Women and minorities would be hardest hit. Race card! That about settle it, doesn’t it?

They have no shame.

He would also be in jail if he were a white, Revolutionary War reenactor caught with a gun that isn’t even classified as a ‘firearm’ by ATF as evidenced by this story from a year ago:
http://radio.foxnews.com/2011/09/27/exclusive-revolutionary-war-re-enactor-says-u-s-capitol-police-tread-on-me/

When does justice kick in? The “least advantaged” (John Rawls) among us would certainly be carted off to jail for this blatant offense.

Arbitrary justice is not justice but a whim of those who hold sway over others. Just ask Eric Holder. Arbitrary justice is not the beloved “fairness” and “egalitarianism” the Left so rabidly pursues. It is the caprice of favoritism and hides the face of tyranny behind a grotesque mask of cheap “grace” – “it’s just all a misunderstanding.”

The New Black Panthers can intimidate voters and be set free, or can publicly put a price on Zimmerman’s head without fear of Obama’s justice department.

But if Boeing goes to a right to work state to create jobs, they need to be made an example of. Or if Gibson Guitar supports a Republican, they need to pay a big price for some possible paperwork error in some foreign law.

Holder can lie to Congress and just revise his lies. He is held in contempt yet still no justice for him. Hillary disappears from the scene of the Benghazi murders, and months later has yet to answer for anything. Witnesses are still not available. Four men are still dead.

Networks are now Pravda.

What about David Gregory, the man himself? Is he willing to hide behind all his would be defenders? What kind of man is he? Your hiding out next Sunday Gregory but what about the next Sunday?

He owes the American people and Mr. LaPierre an explanation as to why he sends his children to guarded schools while pretending outrage at anyone proposing the same protection for all our children. At least Mr. La Pierre understood the urgency of the situation while Gregory is still just playing politics (he can since his children are safe).

MaggotAtBroadAndWall | December 27, 2012 at 10:20 am

The more heartbreaking stories I read about otherwise law abiding citizens losing their liberty and having property seized for UNWITTINGLY violating DC’s draconian, insanely harsh anti-gun laws, the more infuriated I become about the NBC/Gregory case. Those elitist assholes at NBC knowingly violated the law, on national TV, and nothing happens? While war heroes ad “regular” citizens get harshly penalized for not even knowing they violated the law.

WTF?

    Elitist assholes? I couldn’t have said it better myself!

    Those elitist assholes at NBC knowingly violated the law, on national TV, and nothing happens?

    The plural is appropriate and important here. Gregory may well be the least blameworthy of those directly involved. I suspect the real culprits are the producer, director, and other suits who decided to go ahead despite the thumbs-down from the DC police.

      Micha Elyi in reply to gs. | December 27, 2012 at 12:26 pm

      I’m confident a plea deal – probation and an ankle bracelet in lieu of jail time – can be arranged for Mr. Gregory on condition that he testify against the higher-ups in the crime network that used him as a stooge.

david gregory’s defense is the Benghazi defense, without bloody walls.

Pile enough bullshit on it, it will go away.

I assume the Choomer-in-Chief has applied executive background pressure on the MDP so that no prosecution will take place. I’d make a friendly wager on this.

What I find most disturbing is the idea that institutions such as NBC and ATF cite in their defense the idea that one determines the law by asking cops about it. As courts emphasize in many different contexts, regarding criminal law everyone in society is deemed on notice of all duly enacted laws, which as a matter of due process must actually be published. Early on the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the idea of a federal common law of crimes, insisting crimes must be spelled out explicitly. This fundamental idea goes back at least to the Romans’ “Twelve Tables” of 450 B.C.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Tables

How much credence would NBC give this excuse if it wasn’t being offered in defense of its employee? Just imagine if George Zimmerman — not exactly favored in the eyes of NBC — had been acquitted by now, and had done a TV interview on the need to control guns by keeping 30-round magazines out of the hands of thugs like those who menace his neighborhood.

Suppose Zimmerman had waved a 30-round magazine in front of the interviewer, and later when challenged about it said he’d talked to an ATF guy he knew, who’d talked to a couple cops HE knew, who said it was okay. Despite being on the same side ideologically as the leftist media, would Zimmerman get the same “well, the cops erroneously said it was okay” defense Gregory is now enjoying from NBC and others?

[…] MORE: The David Gregory meme started at Legal Insurrection with this post: Feds and media jump to David Gregory’s defense as race card goes missing. […]

I see today that the ATF is walking back their original “advise” about the DC gun law.

Good Grief. If the gun enforcement folks can’t keep the gun laws straight, exactly how does a law abiding citizen remain law abiding ?

    Kenshu Ani in reply to Neo. | December 27, 2012 at 2:21 pm

    That is precisely the point behind these gun control laws. It isn’t about making laws to prevent criminals from violence, it is about making laws to make everyone else criminals.

    Once everyone is a criminal, the government has free reign to control them. Of course, those with power and/or influence are exempt.

Just for fun…how about casting AR magazines about like rose petals during the inaugural procession? I asked my buddy who is dating a smokin’ chick who read in Cosmo that this would be OK…..

Brilliant. White privilege, or rather rich white privilege.

The solution to this is very simple. All that DC needs to do to make his possession legal is deputize him as a member of the District of Columbia police department. Even though there is NO exception in the law for those fine “Law Enforcement” officers, you know very well they have PLENTY of such magazines in their possession. And deputizing celebrities has been standard practice for “Law Enforcement” for QUITE some time now, regardless of whether said celebrity is Elvis Presley, Shaquille O’Neal, or many others. And who cares if it’s retroactive? There clearly is no requirement for “Law Enforcement” to either know the law nor to comply with same.

    Mark Matis in reply to Mark Matis. | December 27, 2012 at 2:15 pm

    Just another thought: Do the SS use high-capacity magazines in their weapons? If so, would it not be appropriate to prosecute THEM for violation of this law as well?

I’ve never read Alinsky, but surely there’s a rule that says something like,

“If your opponent knowingly breaks the law, flaunting the violation publicly, and gets away with it, then summon your forces and break that same law a thousand times, flaunting it in public, bludgeoning him and his allies with their own hypocrisy. And don’t forget the black teenager angle.”

LukeHandCool (who prefers to do battle the noble, old-fashioned way … the way of gentlemen … through persuasion leavened with huge dollops of ridicule)

    LukeHandCool in reply to LukeHandCool. | December 27, 2012 at 2:01 pm

    Of course, the best way to play Luke’s Interpretation of Alinsky’s Rule #1, would be for the Professor, in orange and black Legal Insurrection t-shirt, baseball cap, etc., equipped with an orange and black video camera, to walk around D.C. waving around an identical magazine, asking aloud to passersby why David Gregory gets a free pass on the law.

If you didn’t know this was some MSM dork, wouldn’t you guess he was saying “In what silly world would this thing be illegal?”

Unfortunately, the answer is this one, so pay the price little man.

Maybe Gregory should have talked to his wife. She is a former AUSA and practices white collar criminal law in Wash. She could have told him that the ATF doesn’t trump local criminal law.

I have yet to see this question addressed – Whose magazine is it? Somebody owned it before it got to Gregory. Are they a D.C. resident? What about chain of custody? Isn’t everyone who possessed it in D.C. a felon (on the run) now? And finally, where is the magazine now?

    These are important and observant questions! Who DID provide the magazine? I don’t think I have seen this brought up. And where is it now? We need to find it, quick,it could be killing somebody. Ha.

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