Why the New York Times’ gun control op-ed can (and should) matter - The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/06/in-defense-of-the-politically-futile/


Why the New York Times’ gun control op-ed can (and should) matter

By Janell Ross December 6 at 9:00 AM

The New York Times front page on Saturday.
There is a way of thinking — one that tends to comfort the comfortable and leave the afflicted in extended misery.

It's a way of dividing every vexing, complicated, long-running but slow-moving matter of public debate into one of three categories, then getting about the more ordinary business of one's day.

First, there are ideas and proposals championed by the powerful that generally have a relatively easy path from idea to law. Second, there are issues that have somehow, some way managed to reach the critical mass necessary for change. Usually that's because the economic or reputation-related costs have, in that order of importance, simply grown too large.

Then, there are those matters that are beyond practical political reach. Suffering, death, danger and maltreatment aside, a policy solution to these problems simply has no real path, no viability at all.

And in this moment, it would seem that any and all policy related to guns would belong in that third group. Gun control — or any discussion of a coordinated effort to stem the tide of gun deaths that set this country apart from almost every other industrialized nation — is going nowhere. It's a reality we acknowledge regularly on this very blog, most recently on Saturday morning, the day the New York Times saw fit to devote its first front-page editorial in 95 years to gun control.

To hear political insiders tell it, no matter the ebb and flow of public opinion, the carnage of the nation's latest mass shooting or the almost-unnoticed toll of individual gun deaths, this is an issue that the National Rifle Association "owns." It is an issue that gun-rights advocates have effectively won and isn't really even worth discussing in all that much detail.

But to stop there is to effectively accept that there is no point in ever raising alarms about an issue that will require confrontation with well-funded, influential and powerful political forces. It is also just incredibly glib.

Reasonable people can disagree about the availability and volume of guns in a free society. But understand this: In the decade between 2003 and 2013 — the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — 337,135 people in the United States died because of a homicide, suicide or accident caused by a gun. And owning a gun or being in possession of one does not reliably help people remain unharmed. Study after study has found that, including this one funded by the National Institutes of Health. Those are just the facts. Nothing more.


[Check out this Washington Post graphic: Mass shootings in America over the last 50 years]

Yet, witness the response to the New York Times's front-page editorial about the toll of gun violence and the absence of political action. There are those who have taken to social media, to their blogs and to the airwaves with all their frustrated might. But few have a response that does not rely on either an NRA talking point or the scientifically debunked idea that mental illness is the only issue in need of attention here. These folks are outraged and on fire.

They have lambasted one of the nation's finest papers for daring to do what the founders intended. As Gene Policinski, chief operating officer of the Newseum Institute, told me Saturday, a free press's primary roles are to inform, to stoke debate and to feed the marketplace of ideas. (The institute is the programming and outreach arm of the Newseum, a news and media history organization.)

Newspapers have been and are likely to continue to be one of the most reliable sources of factual reporting, as well as reasoned and fact-centered opinion and analysis. People can turn to them, click on them or turn away. But sometimes, to make plain that an issue has crossed out of the realm of the purely political and into the arena of crisis, newspapers have, on rare occasions, moved opinions off the editorial page and on to the front page, Policinski said.

That's what the New York Journal American did in 1951 when President Harry Truman relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his duties, according to an April analysis compiled by Sharon Shahid, a Newseum researcher and managing editor. That's what the Arizona Republic did in 2010 to call out the absence of action on immigration reform. That's what the Indianapolis Star did in March, when it published an editorial calling on state lawmakers to address the door that a state law opened to widespread discrimination. And that's what the New York Times did Saturday, for only the second time in almost a century.

Now, an arguable step or three down on the outrage scale — but perhaps a notch out on the continuum of ideas most readily embraced by the privileged — are those that complained that the New York Times's editorial reflects a kind of disgusting political opportunism or that it will only deepen public polarization. These people don't agree with the content of the editorial. They don't agree with its placement. They think it will give those who distrust The New York Times new reason to disregard its daily reporting.


These are things that can be most wholeheartedly embraced only if one of the following apply: One has both a weapons stockpile large enough and a trigger finger unquestionably fast enough to rightfully fear no one and no pervasive gun violence trend. Or one belongs to that group of Americans who show up on the news after some violent event and say, with real but perhaps not well-explored feeling, that this "was not supposed to happen here."

Many people who have lived in a neighborhood besieged by gun violence, those who have lost a loved one in a single shooting or a gun-facilitated mass murder very likely read that New York Times editorial or listened to and scrolled through all the commentary and wondered, "What is the big deal?" Or, more likely, "Why has it taken so long for the nation to focus its much-divided attention here?"

Policy reforms and debate are one response to compelling events, to new research and to tragedy in any functioning and healthy democracy. One wonders what anyone arguing against any discussion of gun control at this moment would have thought of the workplace safety laws that followed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. What might they have made of the effort to make lynching a federal felony crime after incredibly brave Americans such as Ida B. Wells made the gruesome handiwork of lynch mobs plain?

Was this work also gauche, imprudent, a waste of time? These issues were polarizing. There were powerful, well-organized and deep-pocketed forces opposed to reforms. And at points, there were also lone champions, activists and voices who refused to abandon their cries for change.

Reform might be difficult, complicated or unlikely. Debate about it may rally those on either side of the cause. But that really is not a valid reason to abandon all efforts to create change.

This is a country in which some of my own great-great grandparents were born slaves, where poor children once toiled — legally — seven days a week, and women could not vote. Changing these things was, for long periods, also unthinkable.


To make those changes possible, someone had to first advance arguments in favor of reform.


Why the New York Times’ gun control op-ed can (and should) matter

The Hill
Obama to deliver rare Oval Office address Sunday on terror threat
-------------------------------------------------


Talk of the New York Times & Washington Post.. newspapers...
It is all over the web & YouTube.. And predictions... What Obama may or may not say tonight.

I think in a show of leadership Obama and Clinton should have their security details relinquish their weapons.

If the rest of us aren't allowed to protect ourselves and our families neither should they.

Silliness like that doesn't help.

I'm trying to figure out this thread subject. The article shown talks ABOUT the NYT OP Ed, but doesn't quote it. And then opening post ends with wondering what the President might say tonight.

I tend to dislike such attempts to predict things myself. I've had a lifetime of egotistical TV newscasters indulging in it, and never seen any instance where the guessing had any point other than for the people doing the guessing, to show off.

So what's this about?

I predict that Obama will say that Islam had nothing to do with the attack.

It's hard to make predictions, especially when it's about the future -
Yogi Berra

Oblowme on news right now...... poor Muslims....wonderful Islam.... bad Americans....guns.... his usual hate America shite

Embarrassing

Ooops. Time for a new crystal ball for you. Put it on your Christmas list for Santa.

Humm the way I heard it there was record gun sales on Black Friday... So guess We The People have spoken what we think about gun control~~~

Ohh and if one checks the status more people have been killed by guns while Obama has been in office.. Due to mass shootings... Just shows those that should not be able to buy guns still do regardless of gun laws.

Don't confuse us with facts Txgal

Lmao ~~~ohh and just for grins Plano Texas per capita has more guns then most areas and guess what crime rate is like 0% by guns...

Where Detroit is Gun Free and they have about the highest crime rate~~~

I mean really people need to think about these type of things.. It is pretty clear which works best ~~~

The mass killings are not going to stop... if you take guns away~~~ Have you notice they normally never tell where they got the guns and if they were registered.... Cause those that want to kill will still be able to get guns..

Not sure how safe it really is this Plano,Tx....
There's no reason for high caliber, automatic weapons so easily available to mental cases out there

http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/tx/plano/crime/

There's no reason for mental cases to be president either.

Utterly false, emotion based thinking meant to progress an agenda.....or just plain ignorance of firearms and U.S. firearms laws and restrictions, either or.


"automatic"

"high caliber"

What HIGH CALIBER,pray tell?
What AUTOMATICS,'splain,Man,'splain!

You aren't doing your cause any good by using false logic.

The fact that people buy guns, doesn't mean that they want EVERYONE to have them. It only means that they want themselves to have them. So no, a rise in gun sales doesn't translate to "the people have spoken" on gun control.

Also, there haven't yet been any significant new gun control laws during the last eight years, so your self-congratulatory and unsupported allegation that "more people have been killed by guns while Obama has been in office," is complete self-delusion.

In fact, IF it were true, then it would be an argument IN FAVOR of doing more to restrict access to weapons of mass murder.

Note that this isn't me supporting or opposing gun regulation ( as a gun owner myself), it's me intently opposing ignorance and lie based arguments on my behalf.

You can't lie in defense of truth, and expect to promote anything but lying.

Humm so your saying that Black Friday that gun sales did not rocket due to more people are arming themselves now..

And that there has not been more mass shootings since Obama has been in office??

As far as I see those are the statements I made.. They evidently can not restrict the guns from those that do the mass shootings. Therefore more citizens are buying guns to protect themselves.. I don't see where I lied those facts can be found fairly easy..

Ohh and it is a fact that the Gun Free Zones are not working...

But it does support the idea that Americans are more in favor of firearms ownership and gun rights than gun control....which, Im guessing, is TxsGals point. Proof you say? Sure....from none other than a liberal rag, The New York Times.....

"" a
majority of Americans say it is
more important to protect the right
of Americans to own guns than for
the government to limit access to
firearms, a Pew Research Center
survey conducted this month found.
The center said that it was the first
time in two decades of its surveys
on attitudes about firearms that a
majority of Americans had
expressed more support for gun
ownership rights than for gun
control.""
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/us/gun-control-gun-rights-pew-survey.html?referer=&_r=0

Ms TxsGal...forgive me if that wasnt your point...or, at least, part of it.


Amd yet not one word on posts about "high caliber automatic weapons easily available to mental cases".....very telling

At what point does a guaranteed Constitutional right, that shall not be infringed, come into the conversation?

So now we target gun ranges? Why not flight schools? Safe driving schools? After all the supposed 9/11 terrorists attended flight schools and more people are killed each year by vehicular accidents.

Take away gun ranges and safety classes and that helps the problem?

We have deleted post due to attacking.

Please keep all post in a debate form and do not attack other members.


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