THE NEW YORK Times is today using its front page for an editorial for the first time in almost 100 years.
The piece, entitled The Gun Epidemic, takes aim at the ease with which people are able to purchase weapons designed to kill with “brutal speed and efficiency”.
At the centre of its argument is a call for a big reduction in the total number of weapons in circulation in the United States and much tougher restrictions on the classification of guns that the public are able to own.
The editorial comes in the wake of shooting attack in California on Wednesday that saw a husband and wife Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik using assault rifles and semi-automatic handguns to kill 14 people and injure 21 others at a social services agency in San Bernardino, California.
In the editorial it states:
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.
It goes on to take aim at the US political classes for failing to take action on the issue.
It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.
Acknowledging that a change in gun laws would require current gun owners to hand in their weapons, the piece concludes by saying:
What better time than during a presidential election to show, at long last, that our nation has retained its sense of decency?
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