Minor problem with the post hoc ergo propter hoc example of D.C. becoming the nation's "Murder Capitol": these severe anti-gun laws and administrative refusal to register any more guns happened before that.
"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.
I agree sending someone to jail over a single shotgun shell is a gross miscarriage of justice and perversion of the law. Committing a second miscarriage of justice by sending a TV news commentator to jail does not make the situation better.
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.
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.
I think you already know that the parent poster is saying that, even if the TV news commentator was the first person to commit the crime, and the commoner was the second, the TV news commentator still wouldn't be punished but the other person would.
This clear inequality appears to bother the parent poster more than the given example of heavy handed punishment.
You might say they bother me at different levels. Having owned guns in an repressive state (but much less so than D.C., although that is and was true of every state to my knowledge), I can empathize with the "commoner".
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.
Sure, the inequality sucks. The way to solve inequality is not "let's make everything equally shitty for everyone". It's "let's make everything equally good for everyone"
"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.