Gun epidemic

NY Times Blasts Politicians For Lack Of Greater Gun Regulations In Epic Page-One Editorial

By Samuel Warde

The New York Times is demanding greater gun regulations in the wake of escalating gun violence in America.

For the first time since 1920, the New York Times Editorial Board published apage-one editorial this Saturday entitled: “End the Gun Epidemic in America.”

The editorial begins by describing America’s gun epidemic as “a moral outrage and a national disgrace that people can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill with brutal speed and efficiency.” 

It suggests drastically reducing the number of firearms, and “eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.”

“All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper,” the editorial continues.

The editorial then calls on the American people to hold their elected officials accountable.

But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.

Getting to the heart of the matter, the Editorial Board calls out the “moral outrage” of civilians being allowed to purchase military-grade weapons.

It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. 

These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. 

America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. 

They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.

The editorial goes on to conclude that: “It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment,” it reads. “No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.”

Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. 

It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.

What better time than during a presidential election to show, at long last, that our nation has retained its sense of decency?

Samuel Warde is a writer, social and political activist, and all-around troublemaker.