Free Republic

--IMAGE HERE -- It is becoming increasingly clear that anti-gun advocates, media personalities, and politicians are completely immune to the laws they insist the rest of must abide by, at least in the District of Columbia. While average citizens and veterans who have served our nation with distinction see their lives ruined, prosecutors repeatedly turn a blind eye when the person breaking the law is espousing an anti-gun agenda. It all started with David Gregory. Despite being warned by the Capitol Police that he could not possess a normal-capacity magazine inside the District of Columbia, he did so anyway. Even...

The attorney general for the District of Columbia, Irvin Nathan, announced Friday that he will not press charges against NBC News’ David Gregory nor any employee of the broadcast network for violating the city’s gun laws. Violation of the city's firearms laws carry a maximum $1,000 fine and one year in jail. Mr. Nathan wrote to an attorney representing Mr. Gregory and NBC News, Lee Levine of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, LLP, that, “OAG has made this determination, despite the clarity of the violation of this important law, because under all of the circumstances here a prosecution would not...

District of Columbia Attorney General Irvin Nathan issued a lengthy letter today explaining the decision not to prosecute David Gregory despite “despite the clarity of the violation of this important law,” despite rejecting NBC’s claims of a subjective misunderstanding of the law, and despite vowing vigorous enforcement of gun laws. -snip- t further undermines public confidence in such decisions to find out that Nathan knew Gregory and his wife, high-powered attorney Beth Wilkinson. Anne dug up the connection in which in 2011 Nathan and Wilkinson participated together in a charity mock trial for the Washington, D.C. Shakespeare Theatre Company (emphasis...

Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - NBC journalist David Gregory won't face charges for displaying a high-capacity ammunition magazine on his "Meet the Press" news program last month, District of Columbia prosecutors announced Friday.

B. Todd Jones, the Acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and Cathy Lanier, Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., are being challenged on selective enforcement of the District’s ban on so-called “large capacity ammunition feeding devices” for semi-automatic firearms. This column will serve as a follow-up to an earlier request asking who authorized violation of the ban, after NBC’s David Gregory produced a magazine during his Dec. 23 “Meet the Press” interview with National Rifle Association head Wayne LaPierre. That request was documented by Gun Rights Examiner and sent to the respective...

The Washington Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) inquiry into whether NBC’s David Gregory possession on national TV of an illegal 30-round “high-capacity” magazine has been ongoing for three weeks. Meanwhile, U.S. Army veteran James Brinkley is still grappling with the fallout from his arrest last year on the same charge. Mr. Brinkley’s story is just one example of at least 105 individuals who, unlike Mr. Gregory, were arrested in 2012 for having a magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds. On Sept. 8, Mr. Brinkley says he intended to drop his wife and young children at the White House for...

I’ve never watched Meet the Press, so I obviously didn’t see David Gregory’s pathetic attempt to play gotcha by unveiling a magazine while interviewing someone from the National Rifle Association. And even when it was revealed that Gregory had broken D.C. law by possessing this supposedly dangerous object (basically a metal box with a spring), I didn’t care.After all, gun control is a foolish policy (as even some leftists and foreigners are slowly beginning to realize). And surely cops have better things to do, after all, than arrest a callow journalist for something that shouldn’t be against the law in...

The media's so full of it. Over the past few weeks, the wife and I have been re-watching the brilliant HBO drama, "The Wire." The show's fifth and final season focuses on the plight of "The Baltimore Sun," as the daily newspaper deals with a collapsing business model in the age of the inter-webs. One of the story's subplots involves a reporter with ambitions to someday work for the "The New York Times" or "The Washington Post." He's a bit overly ambitious, though, and ends up falsifying quotes and sources in order to make a name for himself. One of...

David Gregory walks free while Iraq vet was jailedIt’s been more than a week since police in Washington, D.C., opened an investigation into NBC’s David Gregory’s possession of a “high-capacity magazine” that’s prohibited in the District on on national TV. Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier’s spokesman refused Monday to respond to whether Mr. Gregory had even been interviewed yet. This is a rather curious departure for a city that has been ruthless in enforcing this particular firearms statute against law-abiding citizens who made an honest mistake. In July, The Washington Times highlighted the plight of former Army Spc. Adam...

President Obama is responsible for our fiscal mess. I'm not exaggerating, and I'm not saying that simply because I think that Barack Obama is a terrible president, although I do think that he's an awful president. I'm saying that because the president has had ample opportunity over the past four years to arrive at a compromise solution to our immediate fiscal problem and then to make headway toward dealing with longer-term fiscal issues, but he has failed miserably. If the president had taken some of the advice of his own National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, we wouldn't be counting the...

In December of 2012, David Gregory: deliberately violated D.C. gun law for financial and political gain. In September of 2011, Adam Meckler: inadvertently violated D.C. Gun law. David Gregory possessed a 30 round magazine, categorically prohibited under D.C. Law. Adam Meckler possessed a few 9mm cartridges, without the proper D.C. permit. David Gregory has not been charged, arrested, or taken to jail. Adam Meckler was arrested, handcuffed, taken to jail, eventually was released and plead a plea bargain that included a fine, probation, and being registered on the D.C. gun offender list. David Gregory has been lauded by his...

**SNIP** Those who argue that the investigation is ludicrous have a point: Showing an empty gun magazine on television, though illegal in Washington, D.C., was hardly going to harm anyone. As Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren wrote, it's hard to think of a sillier use of investigative resources. But it's also hard to blame the other side for asking that laws be upheld and applied to all -- especially at a time when so many in the media seem to be pushing for more of those laws. The Gregory investigation may have started as a "non-story," but that's no...

President Obama wants more gun-control laws, but perhaps he should care more about enforcing the ones already on the books. He granted an exclusive interview to NBC’s David Gregory on Saturday, even though the “Meet the Press” anchor is under investigation by the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) for possession of an unregistered “high capacity” magazine in the District. It is also unclear how Mr. Gregory passed the Secret Service background check to enter the White House while under criminal investigation. **SNIP** Chief Lanier is stuck between a rock and a hard place. If she does not charge Mr. Gregory with...

It has been said that no good deed goes unpunished. The converse appears to be true as well, at least if you’re liberal. Dylan Byers writes at Politico that David Gregory, who was originally reported by NBC to be heading out on vacation instead of hosting his weekly Sunday news program "Meet the Press," will indeed be at his anchor desk tomorrow. Not only that, but he has been granted an exclusive interview with none other than President Barack Obama.

An on-air stunt involving an empty high-capacity gun magazine brandished by NBC "Meet the Press" host David Gregory last Sunday in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shootings has taken a bizarre twist. But it raises important issues about fairness and equality before the law. After being called out by viewers, the Metropolitan Police Department confirmed that the incident is "under investigation" because it's illegal to even have such a device in one's possession in the District of Columbia, where the show was taped. The law in question is crystal clear: "No person in the District shall possess, sell,...

And not for David Gregory. 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...

**SNIP** Anyway, there’s a larger picture here and one that plainly highlights the liberal hypocrisy and incoherence that somehow goes unnoticed by a very large number of people in this country who, unfortunately, also vote. Liberals like David Gregory are allowed to break laws to prove a point. I’d be fine with this if they were also held accountable for breaking those laws. But his accomplices – let’s face it, that’s what they are: accomplices after the fact – are defending him from ANY prosecution at all. Why? He broke the law. Fine, he was making a point, but that...

**SNIP** The media’s argument in favor of treating Gregory differently from any other citizen who does not anchor a popular Sunday news broadcast is, essentially, “come on! Really?” Yes, really. The media’s defense of Gregory is entirely personal – he is a member of the media simply doing what the media does. Even if this law is applicable to Gregory (a fact which the media seems prepared to debate), this particular infraction should not result in any penalties. At no point has any member of the media asked if Washington D.C.’s law, which is aimed at reducing the glamour of...

NBC was told by the Washington, D.C., 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.

By now you may have read about the DC Metropolitan Police Department's active investigation into David Gregory. The host of NBC's Meet the Press thought a 30 round AR magazine would make a cool prop to shake in the face of Wayne LaPierre this past Sunday. What Gregory didn't think about was the DC law which forbids the mere possession of any magazine that is capable of holding more than 10 rounds. If he did think about the law, he obviously assumed it didn't apply to "esteemed journalists" such as himself. Now conservative attorney Aaron Walker is offering to defend...