Background: last Sunday on Meet The Press David Gregory brandished a 30 round ammunition magazine while lecturing interrogating interviewing NRA head Wayne LaPierre. The problem is, however, that the mere possession of this item is in point of fact illegal in the District of Columbia, where Meet The Press is filmed. The police have been notified, and they are “investigating.” I’m not sure what they would be investigating, since Gregory demonstrated possession of the item on national television and the law is clear. The penalties are also apparently up to a $1,000 fine and/or a year in jail, but that’s actually incidental to the discussion at hand. What is not incidental is that we have a clear case where somebody broke the law. Probably unaware: but then, ignorance is no excuse for breaking the law.

I am perfectly serious. David Gregory needs to be arrested, for a very simple reason: if I publicly demonstrated my possession of an illegal magazine in DC then I would be arrested – which is something that I already knew very well. That David Gregory apparently did not is because David Gregory thinks that he is protected by privilege – which, as Robert Anton Wilson once reminded us, literally means ‘private law.’ The DC law is absurd and inequitable; it should be repealed. But if it is not going to be repealed then it absolutely must be enforced equitably.

And if your response is that David Gregory can be trusted with a high-capacity magazine because he is unlikely to use it to go on a murder spree, my immediate response would be: the same is equally true of people who legally possess firearms. Only they don’t have a privileged Media job.

Moe Lane (crosspost)