Selective enforcement of the law is the first sign of tyranny
Seems that David Gregory and NBC news, who violated the law on national TV, went and got permission from the ATF. Seems that once the Obama Administration stepped in, permission was granted. It’s OK to break the law so long as it’s propaganda for the administration. And the permission looks to have come 3 days too late? i.e., they phoned in a favor after the fact.
Selective enforcement of the law is a pretty common theme with this administration.
December 26th, 2012 at 8:20 pm
What I want to know, is how many citizens have been jailed in DC for violating this law? And is their skin color darker than David Gregory’s?
December 26th, 2012 at 8:33 pm
@Siergen
This invalidates the charge for anyone going forward in DC. Playing Meet the Press in the motions hearing kaputs the entire law. Unintended consequences, indeed. I look forward to Emily Miller’s article.
December 26th, 2012 at 8:48 pm
This doesn’t make any sense however. The ATF does not enforce DC’s gun laws. It can’t give anybody any “permission” to violate them.
December 26th, 2012 at 8:55 pm
Do this mean that David Gregory can run guns into Mexico now?
December 26th, 2012 at 8:58 pm
What Kevin P. said. ATF cannot say that someone can violate a local law and it just be ok. However, ATF can apparently put pressure on local authorities to not pursue a charge, hence the title of the post, I guess.
December 26th, 2012 at 9:01 pm
Interesting that no one at nbc or mpd knew that for three days.
Retroactive permission?
December 26th, 2012 at 9:02 pm
I would presume that ever since the District of Columbia was given autonomy, a call the the ATF would means squat. Kinda like those letter of determination of legality from ATF’s technical branch.
December 26th, 2012 at 9:57 pm
So if we get caught with anything illegal in DC, all we gotta do is tell the cop we want a “David Gregory”?
December 26th, 2012 at 10:43 pm
DC is set up such that Congress is the final authority. DC isn’t part of any State, and the Feds can preempt any local ordinance they wish, just like your State government can preempt your local government.
December 26th, 2012 at 10:50 pm
Typical. Typically disgusting.. We all hear about people having their lives ruined for breaking some law like this that they didn’t know about or think shouldn’t apply to them since they’re normal and law abiding (otherwise). But this guy gets a pass for being on the right PC side… I say refuse to talk to this guy. Or book interviews and then harass him about this until he is forced out of public life.
December 26th, 2012 at 10:55 pm
You can bet that the…
tax hikes,
Fed employees’ reinstatement wages,
gun purchase prohibitions
…will be retroactive
December 26th, 2012 at 11:07 pm
There is, in fact, without any hyperbole, a lawless, Third World-style system now in operation. It bears no relation to anything in US history.
And the fault lies not in our despicable and sub-mediocre “leadership”, but in ourselves (that is, any of your family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers who make up the ignorant, greedy, racist, clueless majority.
December 26th, 2012 at 11:13 pm
Of course, they will say that he clearly meant no harm and it would be ridiculous to think that he was going to use the magazine in a crime.
Of course, that is true of almost all people who own these things, anyway.
But that would not stop them from arresting us for doing the same, and banning these things on the presumption that we are going to do something bad with them.
Funny, that.
December 26th, 2012 at 11:24 pm
Then we would agree that noone who has such a magazine and means no harm should be prosecuted.
That would be nearly everyone. Large capacity magazines mean that I don’t have to sleep in my web gear. Police run in packs, and they have other guys with guns to cover for them when they run out. Criminals can ignore the law, or can carry extra magazines.
The only kind of law that makes sense is the kind that bans sawed off shotguns in NY- a mandatory 20 year addition to the sentence of anyone convicted of using such a device. In NY, sawed off shotguns fell out of favor, and were often found in post office drop boxes.
December 26th, 2012 at 11:26 pm
The harm that he meant was depriving US citizens of good will of the ability to defend themselves using a large capacity magazine.
December 26th, 2012 at 11:53 pm
I don’t think that the Obama administration will spend any capital at all on gun control, because there’s no political (i.e. electoral) upside in it for them.
And so it’s kind of shocking that they’d bail NBC out on this. This issue will not go away now (Minute Man’s comment is on target here). This is something that nobody will have to explain to Joe Everyman. Our job now is to make sure that “David Gregory” becomes a meme: “Dude, that was such a Gregory.”
December 27th, 2012 at 12:07 am
Uncle, we’ve had selective enforcement for decades. The fact that a book like “Three Felonies A Day” can be written and we don’t all have records proves that.
December 27th, 2012 at 12:15 am
ATF has no authority to waive local DC law. TPTB in DC law enforcement are going to have to look the other way. ATF can’t make them.
December 27th, 2012 at 12:18 am
NBC, in conspiracy with the ATF and acquiescence of Capitol Police, has effectively made this law a Bill of Attainder and unconstitutional.
As such there is no further reason for a citizen to abide the law and any prosecution for it should be nullified by juries.
December 27th, 2012 at 1:04 am
I’m confused, when did law enforcement personnel gain the power to authorize violations of the law?
See what happens when the President starts picking and choosing which laws to ignore and which to enforce? Is their an Executive Order covering this crime?
And is it ever a good idea to take legal advice from a law enforcement officer since they need a whole judicial made up concept of law, qualified immunity, to cover their ignorance of the law?
And should you take such advice from law enforcement given they are permitted by SCOTUS decision to lie to you to further their investigation?
I thought Fast and Furious was dead, now the ATF is intervening so that illegal firearms and magazines can be safely smuggled into DC?
December 27th, 2012 at 1:24 am
“Law is what the fascist body desires to be produced, not what is represented and interpreted in the legal code.”
This matter is sadly a precise operational definition of first-stage totalitarianism, as the preeminent 20th century philosopher, Hannah Arendt, would have noted.
December 27th, 2012 at 8:00 am
Hum, a new legal twist on ex post facto laws.
December 27th, 2012 at 10:03 am
And the ATF isn’t Congress.
December 27th, 2012 at 10:12 am
And they didn’t have the authority to give the go ahead, either.
December 27th, 2012 at 11:48 am
Never. To the best of my knowledge (IANAL, etc.), the fact that someone relied in good faith on the police telling them something was legal is not a bar to successful prosecution if it was not actually legal. At most, it could be considered as a mitigating factor during the sentencing phase, unless mens rea is a component of the crime in the relevant statute.
In fact, I recall reading a case where a judge told someone something was legal when it was not, and that advice was later ruled not to be a bar to prosecution.
December 27th, 2012 at 1:38 pm
Why isn’t the Feds busting the Dope Smokers in Colorado?
Selective Enforcement?