Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
NYT Front-page Editorial: “End the Gun Epidemic in America”
For the first time since 1920, the New York Times has posted an editorial on its front page. Back then, it was to inveigh against the presidential nomination of Warren G. Harding to replace Woodrow Wilson. (Harding went on to win the general election with more than 60 percent of the popular vote.)
This time, the Gray Lady inveighs against guns. We reprint it here in full and ask Ricochet members to respond to it.
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.
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.
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.
Opponents of gun control are saying, as they do after every killing, that no law can unfailingly forestall a specific criminal. That is true. They are talking, many with sincerity, about the constitutional challenges to effective gun regulation. Those challenges exist. They point out that determined killers obtained weapons illegally in places like France, England and Norway that have strict gun laws. Yes, they did.
But at least those countries are trying. The United States is not. Worse, politicians abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them, and voters allow those politicians to keep their jobs. It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.
It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. 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?
Have at it, Ricochetti.
Published in Guns
Would love to see another paper run a response op-ed on their front page. Unfortunately, I can’t think of what particular paper might do that. There are so few really good newspapers left (or right, in this case).
What would be even better would be to see one our GOP presidential candidates stand-up, stick their neck out and respond (with a demand for the front page) to the NY Times. The first one to do so (with gusto and a great knowledge of the constitution) might also get my vote come 2016.
I sure got beat up on the gun issue – I can see I am out of my realm of knowledge here – I think that the gun thing is out of control anyway – I don’t think the founders intended for things to be so out of control – what kind of weapon was used to protect 100 years ago – from hogs or intruders? They’ve gotten more sophisticated, easier to get and it seems a lot more regular citizens (not criminals) are dying as a result.
http://www.newsweek.com/2015/07/24/americans-mass-shootings-assault-weapons-right-bear-arms-354203.html
Reading Newsweak? That was your first mistake.
READ MOR RIKASHAY
If you want to get back to the times before multi-shot guns that could be fired in fairly rapid succession you’re going to have to go back further than 100 years, and back beyond the founders of the US nearly 200 more years to the late 1500s. The idea that quick fire, multi shot guns are a new thing is hokum. Go back nearly 100 years and you’re in the territory of the Browning BAR, but you have to go back nearly 450 years before you get back to single shot guns.
You were beaten up because you only know what the liberal media tells you. Go to the local range and take a shooting class. There is nothing out of control re guns. Rather, most gun violence is committed by gangs while armed civilians effectively stop crimes, often without firing a shot. Rifles are rarely used in such crimes because they are hard to conceal. Our founders depended on armed citizens to defend the country. They also felt an armed citizenry was the best defense against a tyrannical government. No sane person would argue that weapons ill suited for military service were what they intended. Repeating rifles have been with us for almost 150 years. Replacing the lever with the gas tube to eject a spent round and load the next does not make a gun more lethal. Civilians do not buy the military M-16 with a full auto mode. They buy the AR-15 which is limited to semi-auto mode…only one bullet fired per trigger pull. The hated AR and AK fire full metal jacket rounds – a more humane round that doesn’t expand and cause more internal damage. (Self defense and police pistol rounds, on the other hand, are designed to expand and maximize internal damage.) These rifles are designed to reduce recoil, making them a safer, more comfortable rifle for women. Hunting rounds would swallow up AR rounds. As more citizens have become armed, fewer have died.
I’m obviously not beating you up. You seem to have ignored utterly what I said. You think what you think and that’s that.
To each his own.
If you do not believe the founding fathers intended for ordinary citizens to own military weapons you have neglected history. The shooting started when the government attempted to confiscate the weapons of Massachusetts citizens. (That is what this is all about.)
If the Second Amendment exists for any reason it is to give ordinary citizens access to military weapons. It was not intended to promote hunting or for personal self-defense against individual criminals. Through at least the American Civil War private citizens not only owned military-style long arms, they owned artillery pieces. Some even owned warships.
Gun control started in the wake of the American Civil War as a way to disarm blacks and keep them “in their place.” It has racist roots. It did not become generally illegal to own machine guns or artillery until the 1930s, under a Democrat President.
If the Second Amendment is obsolete, so is the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh. So is representative government. If you cannot trust people with guns, you cannot trust them with a vote.
Seawriter
You really are out of your depth here. First, they are not easier to get, nor are more people dying, gun deaths are steadily declining
When the 2nd amendment was drafted, and during the Revolution, the standard weapon almost every militia member had at home was a “military grade” weapon, a variation on the Brown Bess musket. A few had weapons SUPERIOR in range and lethality in the rifled musket. Local militia’s had artillery. The operating definition of the militia was “all free men of age”.
You have no idea what you want as a limit on weapons you would “allow” me to have.
The difference between these two weapons is cosmetic. Function is the same. I pull the trigger once, they shoot once. But a revolver pistol will do the same. Do you want to limit us to single shot bolt action rifles? Oh wait, in the press those are called “sniper weapons”. Never mind. You also have no concept of what a real self defense situation is like with your comment about not needing to shoot multiple times to stop an intruder. If you had any training you would know you shoot until the threat is over. That might be 2 shots, or a dozen.
Learn a little. Have a friend who owns guns take you to the range, and maybe you can gain some real insight.
It sounds like a common mistake, one that I’ve made in the past, namely confusing “semi automatic” with “burst fire.”
It’s amazing how my views on guns were changed almost 180 degrees just by being corrected on that one simple fact.
More havoc has been wrought with that one phrase than any other in American history.
Is declaring that the New York Times is persistently out of touch enough? Let’s go further – the Times editors that wrote this have never been closer to actual danger than having seen a “scary” homeless guy in on a corner along Central Park. It fails completely to take into account the actual empirical evidence of gun violence. But I do give them some credit – finally a liberal has declared that openly that they are against the Second Amendment and believe that it needs to be altered to allow certain guns to be prohibited and that law-abiding people should give up their guns “for the good of the country.”
Forget the fact that it fails to account for several pretty basic facts (apart from the Second Amendment), like: most gun deaths are the result of handguns that not even the Times editorialist are suggesting should be surrendered; that most of the guns used in these mass shootings (including the San Bernadino murders) are purchased legally, with the buyers passing background checks; that even “regular” weapons can pretty easily be converted to “semi-automatic” (or worse); and that the vast majority of gun crime (which accounts for far more actual deaths than these mass murders) are committed with illegal guns. That doesn’t even venture into the “criminals will just shift to homemade explosives” argument or the comparison to Europe where terrorists manage to get sophisticated firearms despite gun laws (and because of said gun laws are very likely to face completely disarmed potential victims).
Here’s a finger the Times and their ilk are unwilling to point – these mass massacres always seem to occur in states that have the strictest gun laws or within localities (or areas) where ordinary citizens are prohibited from carrying their own firearms. California, Colorado, Connecticut, military installations (where servicemen are prohibited from carrying arms), “gun free zones” like schools and colleges (think Virginia Tech). You don’t hear about this type of thing happening in Texas or Georgia or even Florida.