[Infowarrior] - NYT runs first Page 1 editorial since 1920

[Richard Forno]

Gun Debate Yields Page One Editorial

Ravi Somaiya

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/us/gun-debate-yields-page-1-editorial.html

The New York Times is running an editorial on its front page on Saturday, the first time the paper has done so since 1920, calling for greater regulation on guns in the aftermath of a spate of mass shootings.

The editorial, headlined “The Gun Epidemic,” describes it as “a moral outrage and a national disgrace that people can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill with brutal speed and efficiency.” It suggests drastically reducing the number of firearms, and “eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.”

“It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment,” it reads. “No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.”

In a statement, the publisher of The Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., said the paper was placing an editorial on Page 1 for the first time in many decades “to deliver a strong and visible statement of frustration and anguish about our country’s inability to come to terms with the scourge of guns.”

“Even in this digital age, the front page remains an incredibly strong and powerful way to surface issues that demand attention,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “And, what issue is more important than our nation’s failure to protect its citizens?”

The editorial reflects the intensifying debate over gun laws that is taking place in the days following two recent mass shootings — one in Colorado Springs on Nov. 27, and another in San Bernardino, Calif., on Wednesday in which 14 people were shot and killed.

The front page of The Daily News on Thursday collected Twitter posts from Republican politicians offering their prayers to the victims, around the headline “God Isn’t Fixing This.”

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. It was a move, The Times wrote, that would “be received with astonishment and dismay by the party whose suffrages he invites.”

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