'New York Times' puts gun debate editorial on Page One
The New York Times published an editorial Saturday on its front page for the first time in nearly 100 years, one calling for greater steps on gun control.
The editorial comes days after 14 people were gunned down at a social services center in San Bernardino, Calif., two weeks after a shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic and in a six-month span that has seen high-profile shootings in Charleston, S.C., Lafayette, La., and Roanoke, Va.
The words in "End the Gun Epidemic in America" are powerful, calling the gun situation "a moral outrage and national disgrace." The editorial calls for reducing the number of firearms in this country and even eliminating some types of weapons and ammunition.
It is striking that in the digital age the Times was using the power of print to state its case. Still, the editorial was generating lots of buzz on social media Saturday morning.
"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 says.
"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," it continues. "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."
The editorial concludes by asking this question: "What better time than during a presidential election to show, at long last, that our nation has retained its sense of decency?"
In a statement, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said the paper wanted to "deliver a strong and visible statement of frustration and anguish about our country's inability to come to terms with the scourge of guns.".
The Times is not the first to use its coveted real estate on Page One to weigh in on the debate. On Thursday, the New York Daily News went with a provocative Page One that displayed a collection of Twitter posts from GOP politicians who offered thoughts and prayers for the California shooting victims built around the headline: "God Isn't Fixing This."
The last time the Times ran a Page One editorial was in June 1920, when it commented on the nomination of Warren Harding as the GOP presidential candidate.
On the day of the San Bernardino shooting, Paste BN published "Another (mass shooting) day in USA: Our view" in which the Editorial Board wrote that "restrictions that bar people from legally buying guns have remained largely the same for almost 50 years; they merit being updated to screen out more people who have displayed violent behavior."
Follow Susan Miller on Twitter @susmiller.