A Complicit Congress

I chose to look at an article written by the editorial board of the New York Times, called The N.R.A.’s Complicity in Terrorism from June 16, 2016. The editorial board is made up of 16 members who have a wide range of expertise. Their main purpose is to write the Times’s editorials which represent the voice of the board, its editor, and publisher. The editorial board, Letters to the Editor and Op-Ed sections are all operated separately from The Times’s regular newsroom. I believe that this group of writers has a collective amount of integrity and credibility to write on this topic knowledgably.

            The intended audience of this piece is people that read this section of the New York Times, whom I would assume aren’t really looking to be educated and expand their minds but are looking to be fed re-iterations of their own opinions to make themselves feel smart. I wouldn’t say that attitude is particularly uncommon and I also wouldn’t say that it is bad either. There’s a number of people who would take eloquent words from and Op-Ed and turn around and have new rhetoric to use in a discussion. More specifically the audience is probably a person who is mid to upper-middle class, left leaning, who opposes lenient gun control laws.

            This article was written in response to the sickening massacre in Orlando at the Pulse nightclub last weekend. The claim the article makes is that the reason why mass shootings are happening so frequently is because 1, a gun lobby that has blocked common-sense gun laws, and 2, members of congress who side more often with the firearms industry than to their constituencies.

            The article then shifts to the possible steps that could be taken now by congress to combat terrorism. Number 1 being, support reasonable efforts to close the so-called terror gap, and make it harder to suspected terrorists to get their hands on a gun. After this suggestion there is an explanation on why this hasn’t already happened, detailing a bill from the Bush administration that was voted down. They then mention that a bill like that could have prevented someone like Omar Mateen from obtaining a weapon.

The next suggestion is for universal background checks to intercept those who are legally barred from gun ownership and limits on magazine capacity.

In its conclusion the article switches to an emotional tone and moves to point out that for whatever reason the seemingly obvious solutions to these problems are not accidents, and that congress is willingly complicit in gun violence and deaths as a result.

The N.R.A.'s Complicity in Terrorism, The editorial board, The New York Times, June 16 2016