A Front Page Editorial by the New York Times

Front page editorial ("End The Gun Epidemic in America")

Dear Editors:

95 years is a very long time. There must have been many events to which you contemplated a front page reply:  the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, the four term presidency and death of FDR, the Korean War,  Castro, Khrushchev, the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, the Civil Rights Act, Vietnam, the walk on the moon, Watergate, Nixon's resignation, the American embassy hostage crisis, the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan,  the tearing down of the Berlin wall, Monica Lewinsky, 9/11, our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Great Recession, the transcendency of the election of President Obama, Republican obstructionists, the death of Bin Laden, the rise of ISIS, the Donald Trump phenomenon. And countless other defining moments.

For you to choose this issue at this time can only mean that your level of disgust has reached epic proportion for the unfettered fealty of this country to its 300 million and counting weapons of destruction. That we are complicit as a nation in 30,000 deaths each year. That we can no longer turn a blind eye, a deaf ear to the blood and tears, to the cries of anguish. That we can no longer allow fear and hatred to capture our minds and our hearts but that the better part residing in each of us must be heard. That we can and must turn away from this insanity.

Thank you for deciding that too much was enough and for shouting out the window "We are mad as hell and we won't take it anymore." It is well past time for America to wake up to its self inflicted carnage.