The Most Pressing Issue in 95 Years

[Valin]

National Review/The Corner:

Jonah Goldberg

December 4, 2015

 

 

The Peace of Versailles, Buck v. Bell, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor,* the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the Ukrainian famine, the internment of Japanese-Americans, the Tuskegee experiments, the Holocaust, McCarthyism, the Marshall Plan, Jim Crow, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy Assassination, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Kent State, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Watergate, withdrawal from Vietnam, the Killing Fields, the Iran hostage crisis, the Contras, AIDS, gay marriage, the Iran nuclear deal: These are just a few of the things the New York Times chose not to run front page editorials on.

 

But, the “Gun Epidemic” in America? That deserves a front-page editorial. Not only that, it deserves to be bragged about that this is the first time since 1920 they’ve run a front page editorial.

 

It begins:

 

 

 

 

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

First, you’d think it would be better written, given the pomposity of it all.

 

Second, you’d think there would be an actual gun epidemic to justify this break from precedent. Gun murders, as Charlie Cooke keeps pointing out, keep going down. That is not to say that the prevalence of spree or mass killings isn’t a serious issue. Such slaughters, separate and apart from the Islamist threat, are extremely troubling and both parties should do more to address them. But given that gun ownership has skyrocketed while gun homicides have gone down, it’s hard to see how the premise of the editorial — never mind its nearly unprecendented placement — can be defended.

 

(Snip)