If the New York Times editorial board didn’t already exist, I’d have to invent them for my amusement.

Here’s the opening for their latest op-ed.

No Firing Pins, Please, as the N.R.A. Gathers

Seventy-thousand people are expected to attend the National Rifle Association’s convention opening on Friday in Tennessee, and not one of them will be allowed to come armed with guns that can actually shoot. After all the N.R.A. propaganda about how “good guys with guns” are needed to be on guard across American life, from elementary schools to workplaces, the weekend’s gathering of disarmed conventioneers seems the ultimate in hypocrisy.

This lede paragraph in a New York Times editorial today is completely, utterly, factually false.

As NPR discovered after reading one of our articles earlier this week, convention attendees at the NRA Annual meetings can indeed carry firearms at the NRA Annual Meeting:

The National Rifle Association holds an annual meeting every year in a different host city, and requires that attendees follow the federal, state, and local laws applicable in that city, like every major convention of every significant national group, ever.

This year in Tennessee, that means that attendees can indeed carry firearms in the Music City Center with the proper license in accordance with Tennessee law. Bridgestone Arena prohibits the possession of firearms, and always has. Attendees to the concerts held there are not allowed to carry weapons according to these pre-existing laws. Is it really news that the NRA asks members to follow laws?

The only guns to have their firing pins removed are the display guns put up by the vendors, not the self-defense weapons of attendees. It is a common safety practice at every sporting goods show or convention for firing pins to be absent from weapon displays being handled by thousands of people.

Maybe the Times should try to be less of a progressive propaganda outlet, and more of a news organization, where fact-checking and research are still occasionally required.

This false claim is the entire basis for the unsigned Times opinion piece, and the entire piece should be retracted as a result, with an apology to the readers of the Times for failing to do even basic research to see if the claim was true.

Update: The NY Times has re-written the lede, and issued a correction.