T.I. Sentence Too Easy??

Recently, rapper T.I. was sentenced to a year and a day in prison, with $100,000 in fines and an additional 470 hours of community service (he as already served 1000 hours). He had faced a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count, until he cut a deal and pleaded guilty last March to the federal weapons charge.
The reason I found this article interesting was because it shows how celebrities are able to, in a way, cheat the U.S. legal system. T.I. was caught trying to buy unregistered machine guns and silencers. Weapons like this would enable someone to gun down an entire room without anyone even hearing a gunshot. He only received a year in prison and about 1500 hours of community service. T.I. agreed to community service to avoid a lengthy sentence. He has already made 262 public appearances as part of that deal. I find there to be a problem with this. He avoided time in prison because he agreed to perform many community service hours. A normal person would not have as much freedom to make this decision. Being as he is a celebrity, simply making a public appearance counts as community service. He even had his own MTV show where the cameras followed him as he did the community service. Normal people would not have the opportunity to do this and would therefore probably get more prison time.