I’m hoping to have more on this story soon, but in the meantime, ponder this.
Possession or transfer of a high capacity ammunition magazine, or one that could be “readily restored or converted to accept” more than 10 bullets, is a violation of D.C.’s gun law.
So I imagine that if the magazine waved around by David Gregory last Sunday was real, or even a disabled version of a real magazine, it is sitting on a desk someplace at the Meet The Press studio, with no one willing to pick it up.
Because to pick it up would be a potential violation. To transfer it to someone else might be another violation.
Who wants to be the one to turn that magazine over to anyone, even to the lawyers? And since there is no “lawyer exception” under the law, what lawyer would want it?
Assuming they all follow the law, I imagine a somewhat comical scene of people standing around looking at the magazine, but afraid to pick it up, even for a game of hot potato magazine.
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next up is Lemon possibly admitting he illegally purchased a long gun in CO.
http://thepatriotperspective.wordpress.com/2012/12/23/david-gregory-violates-dc-gun-law-on-national-tv/
Professor, good point! That would be an interesting bit of information to find out: exactly how did NBC come to have such an item in their possession, and how exactly did it wind up in the hands of the police, and what were the timelines on both?
Did NBC legal know that one or more of their employees were committing a crime on corporate property? What about management?
What other crimes have been knowingly committed by NBC personnel, and not reported to authorities?
[…] 3: Legal Insurrection points out that they must be playing a game of hot potato with the radioactive ma…, as anyone who holds it is violating the […]
It gets better. Not only have several people possessed the magazine (Gregory, the Prop Master, and probably a couple of stage hands) there has been a conspiracy to violate DC’s gun laws. There has been conversation between two or more persons (probably producers, writers, and even network executives) and there has been a concrete act in furtherance of the conspiracy. The penalty for conspiracy is often greater than the underlying crime.
Will anyone be prosecuted? If so, they will get a fifty dollar fine and a lecture to be more careful next time. The Enemy protects its own.
REMEMBER, Y’All: SPOONS Make Folks FAT.
Got it?
from my amateur reading of the law, the only safe way to move it out of DC would be to hammer it flat.
there’s no way to readily fix that, and it sure as hello won’t function if you do that to it… %-)
Assuming they all follow the law…
I’m sure they follow the laws they think apply to them. But, gun laws are only meant for frothing, gun-worshipping TEA partiers, not them.
They’ll find some intern willing to take one for the cause. The intern will not only claim ownership, but s/he will also swear they lied to Gregory about what it was.
Ah love them interns…
B. Clinton
Professor,
Point of clarification: A ‘bullet,’ strictly speaking, is the payload end of an assembled ‘cartridge.’
An assembled cartridge (typically) has a brass casing, a brass primer (at the base,) a few grains of (“smokeless”) propellant all topped-off with a bullet.
(If the DC Law actually uses the term ‘bullets’ then it’s not enforceable, as no magazine can contain and hold them.)
Cheers
One more thing: Some liberal paper actually published the term “high capacity ammunition.” (I’ll assume they’re referring to the .50 caliber Browning MG round… it’s case is voluminous.)
I realize this is a snarky post written to illustrate the absurdity of the law, but if the DC police department is truly actually conducting an investigation, wouldn’t they have already gone to the scene of the crime to confiscate the magazine as evidence? And if the magazine is no longer there, doesn’t that mean that someone carried the magazine out of the studio so a second crime has been committed?
They got this guy to get rid of it. The payoff was cheap.