Saturday Data: A Rare Page One Editorial

     The New York Times has published an editorial on the front page of today's paper, the first time the paper has done so in almost a century!
     It is accompanied by a note from the publisher explaining their decision to breach the wall between news and opinion---clearly designated as opinion though it may be: The seemingly endless series of mass shooting deaths is the event that prompted the decision.


You can read the publisher's statement HERE.

Here's one section from the editorial:

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. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.

Also consider this: the number of shootings are in dispute...because definitions are too, yet that argument may be a sideshow:

Fox is correct in pointing out that “active shooters” and “mass shootings” are not the same thing. But other statistics, including a Harvard analysis, show that mass shootings—in which four people were killed—have increased in frequency. The July CRS report also indicated that mass shooting incidents are also becoming deadlier.

                                                                                                    (From a New Republic article.)

[Saturday Data is a regular feature of www.timlennox.com]