New York Times newsroom (courtesy innovationsinnewspapers.com)

“The N.R.A. objected to the [Doctors for America] letter’s support for a federal ban on the sale of assault weapons and ammunition, a buyback program to reduce the number of guns in circulation, limits on the purchase of ammunition, mandatory safety training for gun owners, and mandatory waiting periods before completing a purchase,” the New York Times editorial board opines. And now the kicker: “These sane, mainstream proposals will not prevent law-abiding citizens from acquiring and keeping firearms.” Like I said, certifiable.

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83 COMMENTS

  1. I wouldn’t so much claim insane as incredibly, incredibly ignorant about guns and gun rights. However also, if you are like them and view gun ownership as a privilege and not a right, well that as well changes around their thinking (like waiting periods, mandatory testing, etc…).

    • Exactly Kyle. They are not insane, they simply refuse to believe that gun ownership is a right. In their view it is a privilege, and therefore subject to all manner of restrictions, testing, bans and what not.

      • I’m not convinced they view private ownership even as high as a privilege. I’d say rather more like a necessary evil…for now.

    • Gun owners shouldn’t have rights because they are nasty, low life human beings.

      Clearly a level or two below that occupied by our friends of the enlightened left.

      Andrew Breitbart/Ben Shapiro know how it works. The more of us who learn how it works, the better.

    • I don’t understand why the pro-gun community doesn’t get it yet, and why the community is so shocked by stuff like this.

      The statists don’t believe that banning 30 round magazines will stop mass shootings.
      They don’t believe that background checks will reduce gangland drive-bys.
      They don’t believe that banning open and concealed carry will stop public violence.
      They don’t believe that waiting periods will reduce deadly domestic violence.

      When it comes to guns, they believe one thing. They believed it when they introduced the early gun control in the US, targeting freedmen, Hispanics, and Chinese. They believed it in Europe during the interwar period, when they instituted Europe’s gun control. They believed it when Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Mao, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Min, Pol Pot, etc. etc. took power and started confiscating guns. And the republi-crats in modern America believe it:
      Firearms in the hands of the general public are the biggest obstacle for the ruling elite to exert the oppressive power they desire. And they will do or say whatever they have to to remove that obstacle.

    • If what you’re saying is true, that the NYT doesn’t believe that owning guns is a right then they are insane. Refusal to believe the plain truth in the face of overwhelming evidence would be one definition of insane, as in ‘not grounded in reality’.

      • Not insane – but Liberals think differently than we do. And a lot of the reason for that can be explained by science. They have a different brain structure than we do in one important area: the amygdala.

        Their under developed amygdala causes them to think and behave like rabbits. Meanwhile the normal state of human beings is to think and behave like wolves.

        That is what makes them, to us, appear to be totally insane.

      • Actually many of them do consider it a right. The thing is, they also consider a “right” as something that a government grants or rescinds. They don’t accept that a right is something that is inherent with being human. They don’t get that being a rational creature man cannot ultimately be “trained” like animals nor are we “self-perfectable.”

        Then there are others that do not care if it is a right by any definition. They see guns as a threat to their agenda and will say whatever will suit that threat regardless of its truth.

  3. “The N.R.A. also objected to the group’s sensible recommendations ”

    I love how their side is always “sensible.” That’s a nice rhetorical trick.

    “My idea is smart because I say it is.” So that’s how it works, huh. No data, no facts, just declare it “sensible” and create the tautology that any rebuttal MUST be not sensible.

    • D.F.A. was formerly “Doctors For Obama”. It’s a pure front/astro-turf group. It’s not even like the AMA which was a real trade group that was subsequently captured by the lefties.

    • The last quote, in the above article, is the next to last paragrapgh in the NY Times –

      The Opinion Pages|Editorial, The Gun Lobby’s Latest Bizarre Crusade, By THE EDITORIAL BOARD MARCH 17, 2014

  5. Progressives pound this drum all the time. They try to convince everyone that they are the “main stream” thus everyone to the right is an extremist. These are the same people that say the President is center-right. I think the only people that would buy this stuff (other than the proggies) are the ones that would never read a news paper.

  6. I, too, would like them to do a regular gun buy-back. Simple. All federal agencies must buy their pistols, shotguns, and rifles on the domestic used-gun market. They can train armorers to check them and do retrofits as needed. This will support used-gun prices so that I can turn mine over at a lower round count and stay up with the latest innovations. NYT should really like this. It might cut new gun sales by 15 or 20%, and would keep more used guns off the cheap guns market.

    • As a young college student, I strongly object to anything that decreases the number of inexpensive guns on the market.

  7. “The N.R.A. also objected to the group’s sensible recommendations that Congress lift restrictions in federal law that effectively block funding of research on preventing death and injury from firearms and federal data collection on gun violence.”

    So the FBI UCR doesn’t constitute “federal data collection on gun violence”? What exactly is it that they want to see?

    Furthermore, they may not actually want to open that pandora’s box, since most “gun violence” occurs within a specific ethnic group, in an even more specific set of urban locales.

    • What they want to do is to redefine “gun violence” as a public health issue, thus allowing them to circumvent the Second Amendment. “Sensible” rules like requiring doctors to inquire about guns in the home (for the purpose of assessing risks o children and reducing suicides), and then further requiring doctors to post that information in medical records–records are now on-line due to Obamacare–thus handing the government a searchable database for all gun owners.

  8. We support a federal ban on the sale of high page count hardback books, a buyback program to reduce the number of newspapers and magazines in circulation, limits on the purchase of ink and paper, mandatory comprehension training for subscribers, and mandatory waiting periods before completing a purchase. These sane, mainstream proposals will not prevent law-abiding citizens from acquiring and keeping print media.

  9. The definition of an old guy is someone who can remember when the New York Times was a newspaper and not a propaganda rag wholly owned by the Democrat Party.

    • It’s not clear that you don’t have the ownership structure backwards.

      The NYT and NBC created Obama, not the other way around.

      • The NYT and NBC created Obama

        Maybe so, but the NYT was owned by the Dems long before Obama started smoking dope in Hawaii.

  10. Let’s see how the New York Times would feel if this were happening:

    The Associated Press objected to the [N.R.A.] letter’s support for a federal ban on the sale of laserjet printers and toner, a buyback program to reduce the number of newspaper publications in circulation, limits on the purchase of toner, mandatory history training for journalists, and mandatory waiting periods before publishing an article.

    The whaling and gnashing of teeth would be audible for hundreds of miles.

      • Whaling? Are you analogizing the Editor to Ahab? Not that that would be inappropriate–I’ve read that some writers who are not on the editorial staff object to the Editor’s high-handed and totalitarian ways.

  11. Ok it’s the NYT!! A rag in one of the most communist socialistic cities in America!! What did we expect?? Wonder if Michael Bloomers slips them a little something something under the table!!
    The NYT will always side with the progs/socialist/holier than thou crowd because that’s where the Long Term Money/Profits are!! All about pushing an agenda they feel is perfect for us uneducated lowly “Citizens” and making a Nice Profit along with it!! NYC is like Hollywood with a Moneyed Midget in charge!! JMHO!!
    It won’t change anytime in the foreseeable future!!! The residents, for the most part, agree with Bloomers or they wouldn’t be there!! Birds of a feather!!

    • NYT support/condemnation depends on what they are being “holier than thou” about. (and who THEY are.)

  12. Gee, a mainstream media outlet not presenting all their information, intentionally leaving something out to mislead their readers, that never happens.

    If the Times editorial board were honest, they’d say straight up that all those proposals from the liberal doctor group was exactly about eliminating civilian gun ownership. But alas, they pull the “nobody wants to take your guns” bull s%#t. Dishonest brokers of information, they can’t go bankrupt soon enough.

    • It’s an editorial. Editorials are allowed to lie, misrepresent the positions of others, and engage in otherwise inappropriate journalistic behaviors.

  13. Yeah, because, you know, there’s not already a massive body of research indicating that gun ownership has no correlation to violence (*Cough* John Lott *Cough*). Also, gun buyback programs actually increase the number of guns in circulation. Think about it: People are more likely to make a purchase (especially a risky one) if they have an out. Gun buyback programs minimize the risk for gun buyers (or potential ones), so they’re more likely to buy firearms.

  14. I’d say the NYT Editorial Board had a very valid point …….. if they were first able to eliminate corruption in Congress and ensure that all disenfranchised voting American citizens had their voice returned to them, especially during elections. But since they haven’t done that, nor bring these points up on the table for public discussion, they have merely become dutiful minions of a treasonous globalist takeover.

    All those recommendations would be great …….. IF we had a legislature, judiciary and presidency that actually supported the Constitution they’d already sworn to uphold. The problem is that true patriotism has been replaced with political opportunism and the fact that the nitwits at the NYT have NO IDEA about the meaning within the Constitution only means that their once proud paper is now reduced to the level of the Enquirer.

    When the NYT and other currently clueless media can stop following the globalist dictates and educate the populace as to what is really taking place, and they change the tide of self-serving corruption in the rest of government, perhaps then we might actually have a chance. If we ever do get there, we won’t need weapons of any kind; nor will the government and its escalating police state. So, we can ALL turn our guns in. Until such time, I’ll hang on to my toys, [thank you very much] because, short of that, all these progressive (read that as “marxist”) attempts to achieve a population of dumbed-down leftard lemmings will still be to control everyone, and of course only those in charge will have any guns.

  16. “The N.R.A. objected to the [Doctors for America] letter’s support for a federal ban on the sale of assault weapons and ammunition…These sane, mainstream proposals will not prevent law-abiding citizens from acquiring and keeping firearms.”

    I…I think I broke something in my thinking thingy…

    • Here, let me help you with that. “These proposals will not prevent law-abiding citizens from acquiring and keeping (government approved “safe”) firearms.

  17. The leaders of Connecticut and New York should jump into the ocean. The editorial boards of the Times and the Courant should follow them into the depths.

  18. You’d think the money they save not doing this stupid pre-determined studies could go to something like funding illegal immigrant deportation? Nahhh…..

  20. What fascinates me about this is how easily people like this recognize infringement when it is of a right they support. For instance, the NYT editorial board is fully cognizant of how various restrictions on abortion place burdens on those who provide and seek abortions.

    Not trying to start a fight on abortion, just noting how it illustrates the doublethink at work here.

    • Correct! When it is something “I like” it is painted in the most positive, most benefit-of-a-doubt way possible. When it is something “I don’t like” it is eviserated as the worst thing on the planet, ever.

      Liberals are very simple to understand, once you tune into their ignorant, stupid, arrogant self-centeredness.

  21. Whatever. What are they whining about in NYC? They got their “safe” act . Too bad they’ve poisoned words like “progressive”,”liberal” or “compassion”.

  22. As a mechanic, the words that customers used on me to minimize whatever job they want me to do, is ONLY and JUST. They would say things like, can’t you just or it’s only ……
    Anytime I heard only or just come out of their mouth, it was a big red flag and a warning.
    In today inane squabble over gun control, in which the gun grabbers are losing, and know it, they are getting desperate. The water is draining out of the sink and they can’t plug it.
    They “missed it by THAT MUCH” and all the money Bloomberg can poop out his butt and outspend the NRA won’t help. It’s not so much about money now. They lost.
    The word to watch in this time of desperation is “sensible”
    I suppose there are some old nannies sitting around knitting a quilt someplace that watch mainstream news that hear “sensible” and think, well what’s wrong with that???
    But that’s the exception not the rule anymore. The general public is much more sophisticated now.
    Gone are the days of scooping up crap, sprinkling sugar on it and telling us it’s good.
    It’s doesn’t work anymore.

    • I work in computers and with horses. If I had $5 for every time someone said “it’s only…can’t you just” I’d be rich, rich, rich I tell you!!

    • Sometimes I wonder if the refrain of ‘sensible’ isn’t in part the anti’s trying to reassure themselves. Perhaps repeated defeats and stiffening resistance occasionally let in enough of the light of reality to cause them a moment of self doubt regarding their convictions and the only escape back into the matrix is to chant ‘sensible’ like a mantra.

  23. I have yet to see any rational description of how “assault weapons” are any more dangerous than regular rifles (and shotguns), or evidence that EBRs are used “more often” to commit crimes than other firearms. It just isn’t so. While any murder is regrettable, the number killed with EBRs each year is barely statistically significant. Is it because they look “scary” (which the antis will never admit) or because that is the only type of firearm they can have at any success at eliminating?

    • I think you’re very near the truth of it Mark. 30 years ago ownership of ‘EBR’s’ was pretty rare. The antis could divide the fudd and at least ban something, opening the doors to more bans on more types of guns later and giving them some sense of victory. This arose after it became clear that banning handguns (the original goal) just wasn’t going to happen. I believe the anti’s thought that the AWB of ’94 actually kept down the number of EBR owners rather than drive the gun owning community into a frenzy of trying to get them. Like anything else, prohibition made the item more desirable. The rate of ownership of ‘EBRs’ now is so high that banning them again is unthinkable in the same way a handgun ban wasn’t going to work in the 1970’s, but I don’t think the anti’s know that.

  24. Umm… I am fairly sure that banning the very rifles I enjoy shooting, building and collecting does prevent me as a law abiding citizen the ability to acquire and keep firearms.

    I am fairly sure “ban” and “acquire and keep” are not the same.

  25. Except that the president just did commission “research on preventing death and injury from firearms and federal data collection on gun violence.”

    Two questions: How did he do that if it wasn’t legal? What did the research tell us?

  26. The comments section of that article are a painful read, there is so much fail. I would love to comment and explain to them all what “assault weapons” are but the comments are closed now.

    • Comment section is no surprise considering the type of person who would actually read the NYT. Or worse, subscribe to it.

  27. One thing also not mentioned is that one reason the NRA and gun rights proponents were for cutting funding to the CDC on researching gun issues is because the CDC was found to be acting in a blatantly biased manner, as an arm to promote anti-gun legislation. The antis think its funding was cut by gun groups for unscrupulous reasons, but that isn’t the case.

    • Of course… but they don’t see the logical fallacy of requiring training, yet making it harder to get ammunition. I know, I know… It’s a feature, not a bug.

  33. If you really want your blood to boil, read the comments to the article.

    But I have to say it again, WHAT THE HELL ARE DR. MURTHY’S IMPECCABLE CREDENTIALS?

    He is a 36 yr old interist, barely out of residency, who spent more time politicking than engaging in patient care. He has made no obvious achievement in medicine, he is not widely published in the medical journals.

    He is a political hack. He organized a PAC to get Obama elected and ACA signed into law. His gun control advocacy is a side business to being a shill in a lab coat for Obamacare. It is an offence to the United States to make such a transparent political hack the top Doc.

    • But he’s really smart and is a nice guy. If you read the NYT comments, there’s even a commenter who has met him and says so. Obviously he’s qualified – I mean, he’s British, and he even wears glasses. You’re just being a meany-puss!

    • Pretty much all of Obama’s appointments have been based on ideological purity and amount of campaign contributions rather than accomplishments (or any reasonable indicator of competence). Why should the surgeon general be any different?

  34. I support mandatory re-education camps for new york times editors and all other like-minded editors. I’d even be happy to spend taxpayer money on the program. It could be held at Gunsite. Or in hell. Either location would be satisfactory.

  35. None of their suggestions would do anything to make us any safer either.

    What’s the point of giving up a freedom if it DOESN’T make anyone safer?
    It’d be bad enough to do that if it did make you safer, but when it doesn’t, it’s sheer lunacy.
    Especially a waiting period. I just passed an instant check last week. They’ve had that little technological advance available for at least 16 years. I know because that’s about when I started buying guns, and every single one of my background checks has been instant.

    Why have a waiting period of any kind when they instantly know whether or not you’ve passed the background check? It’s just one more way to make it harder for a law-abiding citizen to exercise his or her Second Amendment rights.

  36. These people don’t hate guns. Heck they’re probably gun owners themselves, just like the Hollywood elite. The problem they have is with YOU owning a gun. All of you poor, uneducated slobs could not possibly be smart or rich or beautiful enough to own a gun. Nasty peasants.

    • “Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.”

      Stanislav Mishin
      Pravda
      28.12.2012

  37. Who cares what the NYT Editorial Board says? The NYT, Boston Globe, LA TImes etc are dead men walking and soon to go the way of video rental stores, horse drawn carriages and T Rex. The death of for profit news (printed and electronic) has been under reported (hmmmm, why?) but well known for the better part of 10 years. The best part is, many of the print based companies have sold off their tv & radio broadcast companies to focus on their “core” business which only made them more irrelevant. The concept of a NYT online for a fee is cute but not much more. Admittedly, they have a dedicated audience that gets lathered up to spend a Sunday on the couch reading the Sunday TImes, Globe, etc. That audience is limited in scope and literally dying off.

    Growing up, my 6 grade educated Grandfather (who quit school to work under the table in the mills to support his family), parents and even I would religiously read the morning (Globe) and evening paper (Lowell Sun) to get all of our news.

    • Response cut off…
      Nowadays none of the above read the papers except for my old man and only the Sunday Globe.

  38. Hey, it’s the NY Times. You were expecting sanity? Or any stance other than “we hate the NRA and we hate guns and we hate gun owners and they make us VEWWWY VEWWWY scared!”?

    Seriously, you should not lend that failed, pathetic little organization the prestige of being mentioned in a major web site such as TTAG.

  39. The N.R.A. wrote the letter’s of support for a federal ban on the sale of Newspapers and magazines, a buyback program to reduce the number of lying papers in circulation, limits on the purchase of newspapers , mandatory Constitutional training for journalists, and mandatory waiting periods before completing a news article,” 

    Fixed it for you 😉

  40. From the comments:

    “the nra obviously promotes the gun merchants. it probably has pushed first amendment protections beyond where they ought to be (the constitution is not a suicide pact).

    public officials who decline to say as much don’t need to hold public office.”

    It’s not just the Second Amendment they hate. They are fascists. They hate freedom and liberty.

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