Laws are for little people
[A]s 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.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Sign it.
Rebar on December 29, 2012 at 12:24 PM
I am highly tempted to walk straight through Washington DC with a 30-round clip and a sign that reads “David Gregory Still Hasn’t Been Arrested For This Same Clip” and then dare someone to arrest me.
BigGator5 on December 29, 2012 at 12:26 PM
Laws are made by our elected to keep those that elect them under their thumb! And those that make the laws don’t have to obey the laws they make for us! Sure stinks doesn’t it?
L
letget on December 29, 2012 at 12:33 PM
“The exception proves the rule” comes to mind.
Or maybe, “the child is father of the man”.
David Gregory, do you support strict gun laws, or don’t you?
Paul-Cincy on December 29, 2012 at 12:33 PM
Steyn is a genius. He can write what I think, without mangling it all to pieces.
ButterflyDragon on December 29, 2012 at 12:36 PM
You said it, bro.
Again.
Paul-Cincy on December 29, 2012 at 12:46 PM
Had NRA’s Wayne LaPierre brought that magazine to the MTP interview as a show-and-tell object to prove a point, would the journOlisters have had the vapors over his breaking the DC law? Case closed.
onlineanalyst on December 29, 2012 at 12:54 PM
The government has seen to it that there is a law for everything and everyone is a crimnal. This reduces the standing of law in the eyes of the citizens not increases. It makes law and order a joke.
I would vote campaign fund any politician that promises to repeal a law a day if elected.
unseen on December 29, 2012 at 12:56 PM
If a black man had been carrying that magazine on the streets of DC, he’d have been arrested and facing prosecution. To not charge David Gregory is racist.
rbj on December 29, 2012 at 1:01 PM
What Gregory was planning to do with the magazine is entirely irrelevant. Mere possession is the crime–all on its own. In criminal law, it’s call a strict liability offense.
Game over. The only question is what punishment–imprisonment, fine, or both–should be imposed.
By the way, what would happen if self-righteous Gregory were to walk his magazine into the school that his kids and Obama’s kids attend?
One note to Steyn: I’ve always liked the BP exec’s widely ridiculed formulation of “little people”–”small people.” It would capture Gregory’s gun-control condecension more aptly.
BuckeyeSam on December 29, 2012 at 1:06 PM
The law under the O Regime is capricious.
If I was to organize the sale and transportation of several hundred illegally purchased firearms to Mexican Drug Lords, I’d probably be looking at several decades in a Fed Pen.
Then again, I’m not Eric Holder or the DogMuncher.
Gregory will skate.
CorporatePiggy on December 29, 2012 at 1:10 PM
That’s why fully liberalized countries are referred to as “police states.” With the exception of the powerful or well-connected, the state can arrest anyone at any time. And it’s all perfectly legal.
That’s because, once laws become sufficiently Byzantine, EVERYONE is always guilty of something. There is no need to wait until a crime has been committed, and then go to the trouble of finding the specific individual who committed it. It works the opposite way around: government officials can arrest whomever they want, whenever they want, and then simply compile a list of the crimes that apply to whatever those citizens happen to have been doing.
logis on December 29, 2012 at 1:14 PM
ShainS on December 29, 2012 at 1:20 PM
When it comes to LIBERALS, intentions are all that matter; and those intentions are always conclusively presumed to be perfect.
That’s really the only remaining difference between America and a fully liberalized totalitarianism: the idea that the same laws apply to Party Members and mere citizens alike. Once the last vestiges of that old-fashioned notion have been fully expunged, then what Barack Hussein Obama refers to as his “fundamental transformation of America” will be complete.
logis on December 29, 2012 at 1:24 PM
Socratease on December 29, 2012 at 1:31 PM
I think of Trayvon Martin. George Zimmerman, on the neighborhood watch, normally an applaudable and worthwhile activity. He carried a gun, because of a rottweiler dog loose in the neighborhood. He talked to the police about it, about whether he should carry pepper spray, and they told him, you use pepper spray, you’ll be dead — carry a gun instead. So he did.
And then he observed this kid, and followed him. He called 911. They said “we don’t need you to follow him”. OK. But he needed to follow him, as part of the neighborhood watch, to see where he went. And they had an altercation and he got his nose broke and lacerations on the back of his head from his head smashing on the concrete.
Obama said, “You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”. And then, Zimmerman was charged with second degree murder. Cronyism. Who you know. What group you belong to. It was obvious Zimmerman was defending himself from an aggressor.
Paul-Cincy on December 29, 2012 at 1:33 PM
Will Gregory still be carrying when he interviews
Zero for his show tomorrow ?
Lucano on December 29, 2012 at 1:50 PM
If Gregory isn’t prosecuted, there should be a Million ’30 Round Magazine’ March on Washington to protest the catering to elites in Washington via selective enforcement of the law.
Dusty on December 29, 2012 at 2:02 PM
Actually, it’s crystal clear that David Gregory planned and blatantly committed a crime. He wanted to use an object illegal to possess in DC as a prop on his show, requested permission from the police to violate the ordinance, which was properly refused, and then thumbed his nose at the police and the law by having the contraband brought into DC and openly displayed it in front of millions of people on national TV.
This is a premeditated crime that includes conspiracy since it’s highly improbable that Gregory acted entirely on his own without the prior knowledge of anyone else.
single stack on December 29, 2012 at 2:11 PM