Here's the best part:
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.

@1: which part? the part where they proposed a solution that won't put a dent in the problem?

I tend to blame the criminals when they commit crime.

That seems to be conspicuously absent around here.

“I can't think of the last time the New York Times ran an editorial on A1.”

While reasonable people believe that The Times editorializes on its front page almost every day, the last time The Times ran an editorial on the front page was in June 1920, when it lamented the nomination of Warren G. Harding as the Republican presidential candidate. (He subsequently went on to win the Whitehouse with 64% of the vote).

So SLOG is closed Sundays now? Interesting… Didn’t realize you guys were so religiously observant.

"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"

This was obviously ghost-written by some very angry 20yo womyn with shaved heads in a liberal arts college dorm room.

@6: so it's not a moral outrage then? or only angry feminists think semi-automatic military style rifles are marketed that way? because they are.

perhaps you have some niggling technical objection to semi-auto AR15s or AK47s being described as "weapons of war"?

The horse has left the barn, the genie is out of the bottle, and the cat is out of the bag when it comes to guns in this country. Guns are everywhere, and anyone reading this with a few hundred bucks can go get one in about a half hour.

So the only thing we can really do is just treat guns exactly like we treat cars. Every one must be registered and insured, regardless of where it is purchased/transferred, and if you use it irresponsibly, or create a situation where it is used irresponsibly, you are held criminally and financially responsible.

An up to date license and registration must be kept and shown on demand to law enforcement, and one must demonstrate that they can use the item competently with regularity.

This is the only possible method I can see which would help the problem as well as have a snowball's chance in hell when it comes to passing through Congress.

@8 splitting hairs and semantics. A shotgun is even more deadly and can be purchased with a magazine. This issue is a loser for Dems. Always has been. It will be in 2016.

http://youtu.be/Vgr3kTU68uw

California already has the bans on "assault type weapons" and "ammunition" that the editorial is suggesting. As a state they have the most restrictive laws in the nation.

If the bans aren't working then clearly we need better (and more) bans.

New York Times: "It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation."

Second Amendment: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Hmmmmm... there would seem to be a conflict there.....

What the NYT spectacularly misses is that gun ownership is enshrined in the second AMENDMENT. This Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution in 1791, after they realized (in 1789) that they had constituted great power for government, without establishing the means by which people could defend themselves from the excessive reaches of their own governments.

It is PRECISELY the type of inclinations of governments. slowly, over time – that the 2nd Amendment hedges against. So of course the bossy, intrusive, secretive, power consolidators would like to temper resistance to their interests. That's not paranoia. That's history, and contemporary news.

The very tone of the NYT "it is not necessary" --- and derision "peculiar", and prescriptive nature for "reasonable" regulation are the busy-bodies-made-tyrants history warns us about. (Because Orwell will tell you, if you disagree with the Statists "reasonable" request to do its bidding, you are therefore "unreasonable.")

The NYT begins making the case for gun ownership – not lessening it.

@4: Love those historical tid-bits. And Florence Harding served as a de-facto president for several months keeping all but a few from seeing a dying President Harding.

@10: is that what the Jihadi Couple bought? no, they bought semi-auto AK/AR clones and tried to modify them to full auto.

maybe we should try an experiment: ban the sale of "weapons of war" nationwide, and see if terrorists and schizos switch over to magazine-fed semi auto shotguns. if they do, then we can get rid of the ban. "oh, well, it seemed like it would work!"

like I said previously, the NYT's proposal won't put a dent in the problem.

Dear New York Times,

Insurrection is exactly the reason the Second Amendment exists. It is considered a positive thing.

Didn't General Washington think the militias were pretty lame, favoring the disciplined regular soldier instead?

Can't be bothered to wade thru the ammosexual lies and obfuscations: let's cut to the chase, shall we?

Even with last week's slaughter, California remains one of the states with the fewest gun related deaths because TA DAH: like the other states with fewer citizens mowed down, it has commonsense gun regulation.

Conversely, the states with less firearm regulation than Dodge City have scads more citizens sacrificed to the NRA god Moloch.

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/04/10_state…

This follows the pattern in developed countries all over the world.

MOAR GUNS, MOAR BLOOD.

Who'd a thunk it?

Anyone, not clutching their penis substitute bang bang toy, or the monsters who profit from their shortcomings.

Did we see the editorial about guns on the cover of the NYT on Saturday? Of course we did.

Did we see any posts on slog between Saturday at 10:30 am and Monday at 6:00 am. Of course we didn't.

If we can ban bazookas we can ban assault rifles, or ban handguns, or ban whatever we like. The Second Amendment doesn't tell us what "arms" or "well regulated" means, so we have to make it up. It's either pick and choose which weapons we allow, or let everyone have their own nuclear ICBMs. The simple fact is that a populace so well-armed they could defy the government has always been unthinkable. Letting some man-child think otherwise because he has a gun in his sweaty little hand is an instrument of social control.

I have no idea why anyone thinks collecting all these guns would be so hard. Remember when we ended slavery? Talk about your liberal pipe dreams. While the number of guns keeps increasing, the number of gun owners declines every day. If anything the job is easier than its ever been.

I know we're supposed to be afraid of gun owners, but Saddam Hussein armed his people to the teeth. Was he afraid of them? I know there's a lot of loudmouths on the Internet who think they represent tough minded independent thinkers, but gun owners are sheep. They'd do what a guy in a smart uniform told them to do.

I commend the NYT for printing that editorial prominently and for identifying it clearly as editorial.

@20: There hasn't been a successful insurrection led, and even the ones with arguably reasonable gripes were put down bloodily. The difference now between militia and the state run army is far larger than it was during the last insurrection, which notably had a large portion of the military on its side. Individuals having rifles, or even semi-automatic weapons, will not stop the government if it doesn't want to be stopped.

@23 Except for the impossibly inconvenient facts that gun sales have skyrocketed in the past two decades (though ownership has fallen from 51% to 32%), and with ALL of those evil guns flooding America....

Violent crime has fallen off. Way off. Since it 1993 records the instances are down 35%, on a population that's 25% larger. That's about half the crime rate individuals are exposed to. And during a time of millions more guns.

Because facts and stuff.....

@10: A shotgun is deadly at close range. You can run away from a guy firing buckshot. A guy with a carbine or SMG, not quite so much.

@16: The Bill of Rights was not added to empower the people to rise up against government, but rather to limit government to ensure the freedom of the people. Of the ten Amendments therein, only the first two could be construed to support any sort of revolution. The rest are simply about personal freedoms.
The rights to freedom of speech and of the press are enshrined in the First Amendment, but nobody contests Uncle Sam's power to criminalize speech that incites violence, or to prevent the publication of stolen personal information. Rights have limits to them. And if you really think the Founders approved of the people rising up in revolt every time they got their jammies jumbled, look at what happened to Shays' Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion.

@29: Actually, there's more evidence tying the decrease in crime to Roe v. Wade than to more guns being out there. And hey, wouldn't crime falling in step with gun ownership rates support the proposition that more gun ownership means more crime? After all, a guy with one pistol isn't going to become more likely to mug someone if he has three pistols, right? All it takes is that first pistol, savvy?
You're new here, so I'll tell you what I tell everyone new here who starts talking bullshit: have the facts straight before you post, because I WILL catch you in a lie if you don't.

@29:

Your supposition might hold water were it not for the fact that most of the people causing gun sales to skyrocket are people who already own more guns than they can possibly use, rather than caused by people who previously didn't own guns buying one for the first time. The conclusion being that people aren't necessarily buying more guns as a means of self-protection, so much as they're buying more guns out of fear increased gun violence will lead to more restrictions on gun ownership.

rich white people are the worst. always shooting shit up with their riches and expensive guns. best to ban all those rifles because most of the gun violence committed in this country are suicides. probably a bunch of rich white people killing themselves because their lives are so hard and the system is trying to keep them rich, they can afford living arrangements, medical treatment, legal defense, security. the cards are stacked against them.

all those poor people living in abject poverty sure have it made with all those govt programs and welfare and pills that help 'balance' their brain chemicals so they'll be good little poor people that won't have to worry about being harrassed by police or worry about going into debt when they can't afford to pay their premuims on govt mandated healthcare.

guns are the biggest problem, until an article about melting ice is on the front page, then climate change will be the biggest problem. i'm really surprised no one has claimed guns cause climate change, that would be the double whammy people need to put some pressure on gun manufacturers to make electric and hybrid guns.

need to add; rich white cisgender male christian racist terrorapists. we're clearly dealing with radical supporters of whitesis in this country.

does everyone know how to pick out a racist on sight? by the color of their skin. blacklivesmatter