New York Times uses front page to call for gun control in scathing editorial

NEW YORK – The New York Times is using space on its front page to call for greater gun regulation in the wake recent deadly mass shootings.

Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. says the newspaper is running its first Page 1 editorial since 1920 on Saturday 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.”

The piece is a response to recent gun violence in the United States, including the shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, last week and  a shooting that killed 14 people Wednesday at a social services centre in San Bernardino, California.

The editorial follows an editorial by the New York Daily News which skewered politicians’ responses to the San Bernardino shootings on twitter, saying “God isn’t fixing this.”

The Times says the editorial suggests drastically reducing the number of firearms and even “eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.”

“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,” writes the Editorial Board, which has the byline for the editorial.

The editorial even goes as far as to say U.S. politicians “abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them.”

With files from Global News’ Rebecca Joseph.