It’s been nearly two weeks since NBC’s David Gregory violated Washington, D.C. law on national television by waving around a high capacity magazine for an AR-15 in the face of National Rifle Association vice president Wayne LaPierre to embarrass him. While DC police have said they are investigating, Gregory walks free. DC police chief Cathy L. Lanier’s spokesman refused Monday to respond to whether Mr. Gregory had even been interviewed yet. However, former Army Spc. Adam Meckler was arrested and jailed for having a few long-forgotten rounds of ordinary ammunition — but no gun — in his backpack in Washington.
Mr. Meckler, a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, says that he had no idea it was illegal to have the rounds in his backpack. Yet he faced the same possible sentence as Gregory: $1000 fine and / or 1 year in jail.
The Washington Times reports,
Mr. Meckler was charged with the crime and was forced to accept a plea deal to avoid the cost and time of a protracted legal fight. The indefensible nature of Mr. Meckler’s case led directly to a new law passed by the D.C. Council in December that allows prosecutors to file civil instead of criminal charges, but only if the accused was unaware of the city’s laws.
“I unknowingly broke the law,” Mr. Meckler told The Washington Times. “Mr. Gregory knowingly broke the law. While both are seemingly harmless, both acts were deemed illegal under the District’s obscure firearms laws.” Mr. Meckler said he would never have intentionally left the rounds in his bag.
The former Army medic is still upset about being left with a criminal record and being enrolled on the police list of firearms-related criminals. “I think if you had to measure the criminality of the two instances, his should be interpreted as more severe. At the very least, he should be put on probation, pay a fine and be added to the District’s Gun Offender Registry, as I was ordered to do,” Mr. Meckler said.
Meckler’s story was relayed via the Times back in July,
Spc. Meckler was only 15 days out of active duty and still living at Fort Belvoir when he had to go into the District to turn in his medical records. On Sept. 18, he went to the VFW, which is located inside the Veterans Affairs D.C. regional office, four blocks from the White House. The Army medic carried these paper loosely and created a mess going through the scanner conveyer belt.
The next day, the Kentucky native had to return with more documents so he took his first-aid backpack to keep the papers from flying around again at security. He had used this same bag to do medical coverage at the shooting range for his job and when he shot recreationally. Spc. Meckler owned his military-issued sidearm, the Beretta M9 and a Springfield XDM, also in 9mm.
He took the Metro into the city. At the entrance of the Eye Street building, he got in line to go through the magnetometers again. When it got to his turn, he put the backpack on the conveyer belt. Expecting to be waved through the checkpoint, he was shocked that the security guard held him in place.
“The guard looking at the monitor screen had this crazy look on his face,” Spc. Meckler recalled, when I interviewed him recently. The head security guy walked over to look at the screen. Unbeknownst to Spc. Mecker, the guard saw some rounds of 9mm ammunition in the bag.
He yelled out, ‘Cuff him!’” A guard told Spc. Meckler to put his hands behind him, then slapped steel cuffs tightly on his wrists.
Instead of confiscating the ammo or taking him to Metropolitan Police Department headquarters for arrest, they created a huge, unnecessary scene in the federal government building.
Former Army Specialist Adam Meckler
Barack Obama had no problem having a gun law violator to the White House to interview him in order to push his agenda for an “assault weapons” ban this year, that would include the very things that Gregory waved around, but has yet to even be interviewed by police on. Talk about hypocrisy!
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