Robert Gebeloff

There's something odd with a Sunday New York Times report on gun ownership in America.  They claim the number of Americans owning guns are at its lowest since the 1970s.  They attribute it to a reduction in violent crime, which contradicts the media narrative that we need more gun control, and the increased rates of Americans settling in urban areas.  The problem is two years ago; the number of Americans owning guns was at 47 percent. Now, it's 35 percent.  So, there was a twelve-point drop in two years, and a little over three months after Sandy Hook. 

How could that be right? Here's what the Times duo of Sabrina Tavernise and Robert Gebeloff reported:

Friday's enormous A1 New York Times story by economics reporters Binyamin Appelbaum and Robert Gebeloff tried to soften Americans up for tax hikes under a misleading headline: "Complaints Aside, Most Face Lower Tax Burden Than in the Reagan ’80s." They write:

But in fact, most Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes -- federal, state and local -- than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.

Sunday’s New York Times led with a 4,200 word-feature co-written by economics reporter Binyamin Appelbaum and welfare reporter Robert Gebeloff reporting from middle class Chisago County, “Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It.”

Reporter Matt Bai wrote on the paper's Caucus blog Monday that “A bunch of my liberal friends applauded and sent around this piece, which seemed to validate their sense that the conservative argument about government dependency is specious -- that, in fact, the poor are getting a smaller share of government assistance than they used to, while middle-class voters who resent government are gobbling up more of it.” Although Bai saw some warning signs for the left in the story as well.