The New York Times front-page editorial asserts a “gun epidemic,” which is an odd phrase, unless you think guns themselves — not deaths or shootings — are an evil.

If the editors meant to refer to a gun-death epidemic or a mass-shooting epidemic, here’s a relevant bit of information: Per-capita murders in the U.S. are at their lowest level since FBI records began, and they are trending downwards. The Times editors write “motives do not matter to the dead.” I would add that “weapons of choice do not matter to the dead.” So, here’s a chart of all murders in the U.S, taken from FBI data.