After a weekend of hate-fueled violence and two mass shootings within 24 hours, the New York Post’s editorial board had a message for the country’s commander in chief: “BAN WEAPONS OF WAR.”
The massacres in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, left at least 31 dead and seemed to reinforce how routine mass shootings have become in the United States.
The New York tabloid, controlled by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, took a stand and blasted its message across the front page.
“God save us all, sir. People all across the nation are scared,” the editorial read. “They’re looking to their leaders for more than prayers.”
“President Trump, you are positioned to assuage that fear. On gun control, you are a pragmatic centrist, someone who knows there is a vast majority of Americans who are not to the extreme left or right on this issue. They just want the killings to stop,” it said.
The piece, in one of Trump’s reportedly favorite newspapers, noted the president’s oft-repeated praise of the Second Amendment and close relationship with the National Rifle Association, which supported his 2016 presidential election campaign.
But it called on him to act for the “(much more numerous) Americans who hunt or keep guns for self-defense but are appalled by the endless string of mass shootings.”
Citing the recent drop in New York’s crime rate and attributing it to its police department’s focus on ridding the streets of illegal weapons, the editorial added: “Gun control works.”
According to the Post, an “assault-weapons ban” would be “aimed at the likes of the El Paso shooter, who coldly plotted how to kill as many as possible, as quickly as possible.”
In a tweet Monday, Trump called for “strong background checks” and suggested pairing gun legislation with immigration reform.
This is neither the first time the newspaper nor Murdoch himself has called for stricter gun legislation.
The New York Post begged the president to act in 2018 after the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., asking for “sensible gun control to stop the slaughter.”
After the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn., Murdoch demanded, “When will politicians find courage to ban automatic weapons?”
More than seven years later, as the nation continues to witness these violent deaths, Americans are still waiting for answers.