Liz Spayd captured the Times editorial board’s demagoguery in a November 10, 2016 New York Times article. Spayd, who had left her editor and correspondent job the previous July, related to Michael Cieply, the article’s author, about when she joined the Times and her surprise at its editorial perspective.

Spayd is quoted as saying, “The bigger shock came on being told, at least twice, by Times editors who were describing the paper’s daily Page One meeting: ‘We set the agenda for the country in that room.”

So much for the concept of a Fourth Estate keeping John Q. informed and safe from the potential of a government out of control. The Times’ position on gun control is a classic example of the “setting the agenda for the country” philosophy. It is the tail wagging the dog; facts be damned. The Times is committed to an America devoid of firearms for any purpose at all. No hunting, no recreational shooting, no home protection, no concealed carry and God forbid, certainly no ability to stand up to an oppressive government. They leave no stone unturned when it comes to discrediting guns, gun owners and anything that promotes them.

In “The N.R.A. Says, Go Ahead, Make My Fantasy,” an April 24th Times article, the author takes aim at the NRA’s National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Virginia. The writer, Francis X. Clines, doesn’t try to hide his disdain for the museum’s support for the Second Amendment. Clines commented on a life size poster figure of John Wayne holding a Winchester carbine and ready to take on the bad guys.

“He was about to deliver blazing fantasies of triumphant gunfire that would leave them dead in the dust. It’s no wonder modern Florida legislators could not resist protecting actual shooters who draw and fire like John Wayne as guilt-free, “stand-your-ground” defenders,” he wrote, and “Why is there no stream of gripping films about the thousands of troubled Americans with easy access to guns who can lethally act out their darkest grievances on family and society day after day?”

Really? Well, why hasn’t there been a New York Times article that points out two-thirds of the nation’s homicides occur in five percent of the 3,143 counties and county-equivalents? Where is the New York Times article explaining that those counties are concentrated around major cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit and New York; cities that have long-standing Democratic rule?

An April 25th Washington Times article citing a Crime Prevention Research Center study put today’s violence in perspective. In it, John Lott, the author of the study, said, “You have over half the murders in the United States taking place in two percent of the counties.”

Lott uses the term “counties” loosely because violent crime can be in a given neighborhood and even a specific street within a county. David Weisburd, director of the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University, said “Those results shouldn’t be entirely surprising, as other factors like poverty and human activity are also concentrated.”

Additionally, Weisburd noted that in his studies of larger cities, about one percent of the streets produce 25 percent of the crime and about 5 percent of the streets produce 50 percent of the crime. “It’s almost exactly the same concentration in New York, Tel Aviv, Cincinnati and Sacramento,” he said, which brings me to the point.

The bulk of the mainstream press, with the New York Times as its standard-bearer target firearms as the single most significant factor in aggravated assault offenses. According to the Department of Justice 2015 Crime in the U.S. report, the fact is violent crime doesn’t primarily involve firearms. Of the aggravated assault offenses reported in 2015, firearms were used in 24.2%. Over 75 percent of aggravated assaults involved personal weapons such as hands, fists, feet, etc (26.3%), knives and other cutting instruments (18.1%) and all other types of weapons (31.4%).

Finally, an October 2015 study reported in Preventive Medicine, found criminals obtain most of their guns through their social network and personal connections. Rarely is the proximate source either direct purchase from a gun store, or even theft. “This agrees with other, broader studies of incarcerated felons,” it reports.

I’d like to see some New York Times articles reporting these facts. Go ahead New York Times, make my day.