Petition to press charges on MSNBC's David Gregory

Need some background information, although I can gather what happened from the write up on the petition.

He held up a 30-round AR mag when he was "interviewing" Wayne LaPierre. The studio is in DC, so if it's a real mag, it's a felony. Now the gun banners are falling all over themselves trying to defend him. One that I read online said that it was probably a "spent one with no bullets left in it."

Yeah, that'll fly: "It's OK, officer -- it's empty. I shot all the bullets already." It amazes me that people feel entitled to have strong opinions on subjects of which they are totally ignorant.

the network was aware. sought permission from cops. cops said no. network went ahead

Looks like the Metro Police are indeed investigating: http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=691503

Tried to sign the petion and got this response "The petition you are trying to access has expired, because it failed to meet the signature threshold."

If I don't support the law, why would I want to encourage them to enforce it?

Johannes_Paulsen said:

If I don't support the law, why would I want to encourage them to enforce it?

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Probably to show how utterly ridiculous it is...

Sent from my Inspire 4G using Tapatalk 2

But that can be done without petitioning the government to enforce a law like this that violates someone's civil rights.

If I have a right to buy this magazine, then everyone does -- even *******s like David Gregory.

Originally Posted by Johannes_Paulsen
If I don't support the law, why would I want to encourage them to enforce it?

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to show how utterly ridiculous it is...

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Exactly! The reporter proved our point for us. He was calling for a law restricting full capacity magazines while violating an existing one proving the futility of such laws.

@jimmyray: fine, and the point was taken. That does not require me to hector public officials into enforcing this law.

D. C. Police — NBC requested and was denied permission to use high capacity magazine in news segment
Posted by William A. Jacobson
Wednesday, December 26, 2012 at 11:23am
http://networkedblogs.com/GozP6

As noted in an earlier post, an email has surfaced purporting to be from the D. C. Metropolitan Police Department stating that NBC requested permission to use a high capacity ammunication magazine and that the request was denied.

The email first appeared on the AR15 gun forum, and then at the The Patriot Perspective blog which first broke the Gregory story.

Here is the email, with the addressee’s identity removed:

“From: “DC Police (imailagent) ” <customerservice. [email protected]> Subject: Email from DC Police (Intranet Quorum IMA00519327) Date: December 24, 2012 4:13:12 PM EST To: -


Fearing the email was a hoax, I was cautious about running the text of the email. But as earlier reported, a confidential source who works for D. C. government verified that the email was in a format used by the MPD:


Now I have received confirmation that the e-mail is authentic.

I forwarded the text of the email, exactly as it appears above, to Gwendolyn Crump, Director, Office of Communications for the MPD, with the following question:


Ms. Crump responded:


I further followed up to make sure that the email was an actual email sent by MPD, not just that it “appeared” to be one, and Ms. Crump confirmed:


Officer Aziz Alali of the MPD Public Information Office further confirmed the authenticity of the e-mail, and gave me this statement by telephone:


NBC News has not responded to multiple inquiries as to the request and denial, or whether the magazine was real or just a prop. During the segment in question, Gregory stated “here is a magazine for ammunition that carries 30 bullets. ”

Here's my question.

Where did he GET the magazine??????

If the cops even hint at charges Gregory will be screaming FIRST AMENDMENT!!!!!!!

AFS

The 1st amendment is not an excuse to break a law, IIRC, there was a case years ago where a reporter bought child porn for a story on it and got in trouble, tried to use that defense and it didn't work.

That does not require me to hector public officials into enforcing this law.

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No no-one is requiring you or anyone else to do anything. It is just a golden opportunity to use THEIR own words and actions against them.

Signing this petition is a bad idea in my opinion. While I am sure that it would give a momentary surge of satisfaction to many gun owners if charges were brought up against this guy the long term effect is that it would further enforce the public perception that second ammendment advocates are intolerant people that try to punish anyone that disagrees witht them. True advocates of the second ammendment would not want to see anybody prosecuted for possessing a 30 round magazine even if it was David Gregory. The average person is going to see this petition as a politically motivated attack against someone because of their beliefs similar to the petition to deport piers morgan. Actions such as these are tactically short sighted and actually undermine the casue in which they intend to support.

The average person is going to see this petition as a politically motivated attack against someone because of their beliefs similar to the petition to deport piers morgan.

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I don't see a negative here. What is wrong with using their own weapons against them? If they want possession of an object to be illegal for others along with penalties they should be willing to PAY the same penalty when THEY break that law. If nothing else it will point out their ignorance of laws already on the books(where they are located).

Johannes_Paulsen said:

If I don't support the law, why would I want to encourage them to enforce it?

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Because laws that are not consistently enforced are the worse thing there is.

Do you really want them to pass laws that apply to you and me but not to people who are "somebody"?

Not just no...but HELL NO!

I'll sign it. I obviously don't support the law, but you can bet if a pro gun advocate had violated the law like this, there would be all kinds of media "investigative reports", follow-ups about how the evil gun advocate skirted the law, and hounding of the police/DA to prosecute. I don't feel that he had any moral high ground, and perhaps his getting prosecuted for just having a magazine might help him understand things a bit better.

I won't sign it either. This man bought the rope and tied the noose should the authorities decide to pursue it.

No matter the outcome, this is an excellent opportunity to show the idiocy of such laws and why they are ineffective. All we have to do is sit back and watch.

Oh god, this is special. This is the equivalent of me walking into a police station with a some crack and a pipe, asking the police, "Hey is this legal?" and then start smoking away to demonstrate what I meant.

@Warp:

You either have a right to own a 30-round magazine, or you don't.

If this is a right, we ought to stand up and defend anyone who is prosecuted under this unjust law.

If it isn't a right, let's come down from the soapbox and start working out what sort of "reasonable" gun control we're willing to accept.

Jimmyray, the public is already aware of the issue and the police are investigating it. You already have all of the benefits of being able to use this situation to point out the hypocrisy and the uselessness of the laws. I don't really see any additional benefit to pursuing a petition to prosecute someone for a law that you are in opposition to. I only see the downside when joe public perceives the petition to be the gun lobby bullying someone that doesn't agree with them.

Johannes_Paulsen said:

@Warp:

You either have a right to own a 30-round magazine, or you don't.

If this is a right, we ought to stand up and defend anyone who is prosecuted under this unjust law.

If it isn't a right, let's come down from the soapbox and start working out what sort of "reasonable" gun control we're willing to accept.

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Laws that are not applied consistently are the worse possible option.