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December 16, 2015
The New York Times Anti-Gun Crusade Kicks it Up a Notch
It should come as news to no one that the New York Times editorial board and newsroom has been on an institutional mission to impose more gun control restrictions and infringe on Americans’ Second Amendment rights. The paper recently upped the volume on its media megaphone-blared demands, with a prideful page-one editorial placement.
A self-congratulating post by the editor described how the publisher encouraged the editorial staff to step up its attacks on our rights but he omitted one key fact – that the publisher is one of the very few to hold a New York City-issued handgun carry permit. Elitist hypocrisy, apparently, is no obstacle in this crusade.
Neither is cognitive dissonance, since the paper funded new polling that shows an increase in opposition to the same gun control proposals the paper supports. For the first time in 20 years of New York Times and CBS News polling, a majority of Americans say they oppose a “ban on assault weapons.” Even more, the poll shows a dramatic almost 10 percent drop in Americans’ support for an “assault weapons ban” since January 2011. That’s no margin of error difference.
Americans increasingly understand that banning popular firearms based on their cosmetic features do nothing to prevent tragedy. Coincidentally, the poll shows that the share of respondents who think stricter gun laws would help prevent criminal violence also dropped. Now, only 26 percent think more gun control would do “a lot,” down from 29 percent in October. Those saying it would not help at all jumped to 33 percent from 25 percent.
The newspaper is joined by other gun control advocates who pay no heed to the facts or public opinion. In the wake of recent terrorist attacks both here and abroad, the White House renewed its call for an assault weapons ban. During his Dec. 3 daily podium appearance the press secretary offered his version of a political “Throwback Thursday” by embracing the failed gun control agenda of an earlier era.
“One thing we could do is we could ban the sale of assault weapons,” said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. “That certainly would make it harder for those individuals who shouldn’t have them from getting them.”
Americans already know that a new ban on modern sporting rifles would have no effect on reducing crime. This is not conjecture, it’s demonstrable. Any serious attempt to reduce criminal violence must begin with enforcing the myriad of laws already on the books and by doing more to keep firearms out of the hands of those already prohibited from possessing them. Improving the submission of all appropriate criminal and adjudicated mental health records by the states to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), what we launched as the FixNICS initiative in 2013, is the single best way of making the most practical progress toward that goal.
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