End the Gun Epidemic in America – Front page Editorial in NY Times in 93 years

(In the pic:  CreditDoug Mills/   The Editorial Board, in N.Y.Times – Dec.5/15

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

 (Note: This editorial was published on the front page of New York Times on  Dec. 5/15.  It is the first time an editorial has appeared on the front page since 1920. That speaks volumes for the importance, the paper gives to the urgency of the issue to be treated instantly and forcefully. Well wishers of America,  led by President  Obama, have been repeating it as nausea. But it has not 290250_235977559773812_6983603_oregistered on the minds of American law makes in Senate and House. If the country does not act decidedly, even at this late hour the nation should forthwith disown its right to describe itself as “the land of the free, the home of the brave and a city seated on a mountain top” to attract the attention and admiration of the whole world. Let not the curse of victims of gun culture at home and abroad fall on this great country like the fierce staring THIRD EYE of Siva capable of reducing it to ashes, we   pray. james kottoor, editor)

                    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.

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.

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