Edit: Another question gets downvoted. Hacker News really hates when people ask questions. You can go through my recent comment history and see where other questions[1] I ask get downvoted too. Whatever you do, don't ask people on Hacker News about whatever comments they make.
I think at this point pg would be doing everyone a favor if he just rebooted this site or just closed it down completely given what it the community has turned into.
Don't think those of us in "flyover country" aren't paying attention to this political corruption in the nation's capitol.
And yes, equality is something that governments attempt to achieve through laws. Equal application of the law is one of the founding tenets of the US government. In my opinion, yes, equality is a more worthy goal to pursue than blanket enforcement of every law that happens to have gotten onto the books.
And the fact is they uniformly enforce these laws, albeit with quite a few jury nullifications, except when people like David Gregory and institutions like NBC commit these crimes. Knowingly in NBC's case.
I wish more people would admit we have a severe problem with having effectively having two sets of laws, one for our nomenklatura and another for the rest of us.
Certain individuals who are part of the DC government believe those things. Some other individuals don't. We count up the ones on each side and then democracy happens. We have the courts to make sure the majority hasn't gone completely crazy.
DC went through a long time where they were leading the US in murders. When people are getting shot around you left and right, it's pretty reasonable to think that maybe you could stop that if you could stop people from having guns. The purpose of the laws was to stop people from getting shot. It's pretty clear that David Gregory was not going to shoot anyone, so putting him in jail was not going to serve the purpose of the law.
Are they willing to be as rational if the person isn't famous? I don't know. I'm not aware of any other cases where a non-famous citizen has gotten ahold of an illegal ammo clip to use as a prop in an argument about gun control.
"We have the courts to make sure the majority hasn't gone completely crazy."
Yes, that's what Heller was all about, but that hasn't stopped D.C. from engaging in Massive Resistance.
Getting back to the other case, Irvin Nathan had one defective shotgun shell in his home. Is putting him in jail going to serve the purported purpose of the law?
There are plenty of analogous examples to David Gregory with "illegal guns" being used a props by politicians and the like. Of course, they too are members of the nomenklatura that people like you are so willing to excuse.
Now you have two people in jail instead of one. We should be trying to have zero people in jail who should not be there. We shouldn't say "Well, we put one person there for a bad reason, so we should put everyone else there for the same bad reason too". This is what you seem to be proposing. I get David Gregory doesn't share your politics, and maybe you just don't like him. That doesn't mean we should put him in jail just so you can feel better about some other person getting screwed. I doubt Irvin Nathan would feel any better about being in jail if David Gregory were there along with him. I'm sure he'd much rather just not be there.
Side note: You can look at actual data here - http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/dccrime.htm
The murder rate in DC was rising steadily since 1960 until the gun control laws were passed in 1976. It went down briefly, then exploded with the crack epidemic in the late 80s, early 90s. Obviously, there are many, many factors contributing to the murder rate and you can't control it by modifying only one input. I'm not trying to imply otherwise.
This clear inequality appears to bother the parent poster more than the given example of heavy handed punishment.
Whereas the establishment of a shameless nomenklatura in the US is an existential threat to the Republic. Which could, I might add, have even nastier personal consequences.
Invidious gun grabber laws are as old as Reconstruction, but we've been fantastically successful at beating them back starting in 1986. Our fight with our ruling class ... not so much.