One must wonder what it is New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay has on her employers that allows her to continue to embarrass the paper of record with such frequency and abandon.
As National Review’s Charles Cooke says of the leeway CNN gives play-pretend newsman and professional nepotist Chris Cuomo: “One is tempted to conclude [he] must have laced CNN’s corporate offices with dynamite and informed the powers that be that, if he goes, they go, too.”
The latest example of Gay embarrassing her employer comes this week in the form of an appearance on MSNBC. During an interview on Morning Joe, Gay argued economic anxiety is likely driving the recent crime wave plaguing major U.S. cities. She also blamed the Second Amendment.
“The United States has a gun problem,” Gay said. “We have too many guns on our streets so we need federal action to get them off the streets because individual states and cities, like New York, cannot stop the flow of guns from coming into New York City, for example, without federal action. Just rational action to prevent bad actors from getting their hands on guns. That’s the first thing.”
She continued, citing anonymous “violence and crime” experts who allegedly say it’s simply too early to say what’s driving the spike in crime, even as she definitively blames all those guns that were mostly there before this crime wave started.
“But those who have worked on this issue for a very long time know — what they will tell you is that this is not surprising given the level of disruption, trauma, grief, joblessness, homelessness,” Gay said, “and just general upheaval that the United States has gone through, particularly communities of color and people living in poverty across the United States.”
The New York Times editorial board member concluded:
<bsp-quote data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1624595885755,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000162-07b0-de22-a173-2ffa3d100000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1624595885755,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000162-07b0-de22-a173-2ffa3d100000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"quote":"So we do, I believe, need to make sure that police have the right resources to do the job well. That funding should come with accountability, it should come with reform and it should also come, I believe – and I don’t think that this is that different from what you’re seeing from many, many people are saying – it should come with some discussion of funding for other things that can help reduce violence and that can include cure violence programs, violence interrupter programs, but also after school programs, athletic associations, jobs.
People need help in their lives to stay away from crime and it’s not only police that should be the tool.","_id":"0000017a-4175-d416-ad7a-73f5a3290000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b92f10002"}”>So we do, I believe, need to make sure that police have the right resources to do the job well. That funding should come with accountability, it should come with reform and it should also come, I believe – and I don’t think that this is that different from what you’re seeing from many, many people are saying – it should come with some discussion of funding for other things that can help reduce violence and that can include cure violence programs, violence interrupter programs, but also after school programs, athletic associations, jobs.
People need help in their lives to stay away from crime and it’s not only police that should be the tool.For Gay’s theory about firearms to be true, she has to explain whether it’s easier now to obtain a firearm than it was in 2020, 2019, or 2018. Are there more guns on the streets now than in previous years? Given that there really aren’t, well, why the increase in shootings? What, if any, changes in gun laws and the availability of firearms explain the surge of shootings in, say, Portland, Oregon?
Naturally, Gay doesn’t bother addressing any of these questions. She is on television to spread Democratic Party talking points.
Consider the following passage from the Seattle Times:
<bsp-quote data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1624595757807,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000162-07b0-de22-a173-2ffa3d100000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1624595757807,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000162-07b0-de22-a173-2ffa3d100000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"quote":"As of [June 1], 37 people had died in Portland homicides this year, a more-than-sevenfold increase compared with the first five months of last year, and a stark contrast to Seattle, a larger city, where 11 homicides had been recorded as of late May. So far this year, the victims have disproportionately been people of color.
In Portland, shootings that wound people also have soared.
By the end of April, 89 people had been injured by gun violence, which is nearly triple the number for the first four months of last year and nearly quadruple that of the same period in 2019.","_id":"0000017a-4173-d0ae-abff-7d73ed900000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b92f10002"}”>As of [June 1], 37 people had died in Portland homicides this year, a more-than-sevenfold increase compared with the first five months of last year, and a stark contrast to Seattle, a larger city, where 11 homicides had been recorded as of late May. So far this year, the victims have disproportionately been people of color.
In Portland, shootings that wound people also have soared.
By the end of April, 89 people had been injured by gun violence, which is nearly triple the number for the first four months of last year and nearly quadruple that of the same period in 2019.Considering “shootings” is its own category, Gay’s theory about guns instantly fails to explain Portland’s overall increase in homicides from this time last year.
This brings us to the anonymous experts cited by the New York Times editorial board member, the ones who say economic anxiety is the root cause of the crime wave. (It’d be nice if she said who, exactly, these experts are. The appeal to authority is a fallacy in good times, but it would still work a little better if she could at least put a name to the face.) The issue with this claim is this: If economic factors are responsible for the current crime wave, then what are we to make of the fact crime went down during the Great Recession, even despite record unemployment numbers?
“For 2009, the FBI reported an 8% drop in the nationwide robbery rate and a 17% reduction in the auto-theft rate from the previous year,” City Journal reported in 2011.
In contrast, law enforcement officials in Washington, D.C., have investigated more than 129 carjackings in 2021, up 148% from around this time last year.
“Between 2008 and 2010,” City Journal added, “New York City experienced a 4 percent decline in the robbery rate and a 10 percent fall in the burglary rate. Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles witnessed similar declines. The FBI’s latest numbers, for 2010, show that the national crime rate fell again.”
Perhaps Gay’s anonymous experts are on to something. Then again, perhaps the spike in crime this year has less to do with economic factors and more to do with widespread anti-police sentiment, battles over police funding, and the growing number of law enforcement officials who have quit the force.
Time will obviously tell as more data become available. For now, though, it’s probably best we take Gay’s analysis about as seriously as it deserves to be taken, which, considering she’s the same person who struggles with basic arithmetic and is “disturbed” by conspicuous displays of the U.S. flag, is to say not at all.
