HOT SHOT: Pistol-packin’ Tennessee gal Meredith Graves leaves Manhattan court yesterday after pleading guilty. (Matthew McDermott)
Sometimes you just forget the handgun is in your bag.
A registered nurse and fourth-year med student from Knoxville took a no-jail time deal yesterday for the Tennessee-registered gun she had absentmindedly carried to the 9/11 Memorial last December.
Pretty, hazel-eyed Meredith Graves admitted through her lawyer that she had merely forgotten that the little .22-caliber handgun was in her purse.
She was busted when she tried to check the weapon with memorial security personnel.
“It was completely inadvertent,” Graves’ lawyer, Daniel Horwitz, said after his client took her plea.
“She lives a very hectic life” as a doctor in training, “working nights and then mornings,” he explained.
“Somehow, the bag got packed, and the gun was in there.”
It’s illegal to carry even a legally out-of-state-registered firearm in New York unless it is also specifically licensed here.
Graves, 39, walked out of Manhattan Supreme Court with her husband at her side and a new misdemeanor weapons charge on her record.
She gave reporters a polite “thank you” and left court declining to comment on her deal.
In a morning hearing, prosecutors dropped the original felony gun-possession charges that had made her a cause celebre among gun advocates — charges carrying a mandatory minimum of 3 1/2 years in prison.
Graves instead pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor weapons-possession charge, a move that she hopes will save both her gun license and pending medical license, said her lawyer.
“We’re hoping that wherever she ends up practicing, this is the kind of disposition where licensing boards have a lot of discretion,” Horwitz said.
“She’s happy that this ordeal is over, and she’s looking forward to getting on with her life and her career as a doctor,” he said, adding that Graves graduates in May from a Knoxville-based medical school.
It was all just an innocent mistake, the lawyer explained.
Graves had come to New York for a job interview, and realized she had her small handgun on her once she stopped by the 9/11 Memorial to pay her respects.
States including Tennessee and Michigan don’t even consider an out-of-state-registered weapons rap to be a crime, the lawyer said.
Graves’ arrest was the first in a string of gun-possession arrests of travelers bringing their home state-registered guns into the city.
The case of Ryan Jerome, an Indiana-based jeweler and former Marine, sparked a nationwide letter-writing campaign led by fellow Marines urging his gun-possession charges be dropped entirely.
Jerome — who had been summary court-martialed in 2005 — had tried to check his Indiana-registered gun at the Empire State Building.
Prosecutors have offered Jerome the same misdemeanor, no-jail deal they are giving Graves.
But as of last month, he had rejected the offer. He is due back in court today.
“He’ll be there,” defense lawyer Mark Bederow said of Jerome.
He declined to discuss what is planned for the court appearance.