In this July 22, 2008 file photo, traffic passes in front of The New York Times building in New York. (Mark Lennihan / Associated Press)

A front-page editorial is a rare and remarkable thing for any newspaper. The New York Times ran one on Saturday, in response to the terror attack in San Bernardino that killed 14 last week. That’s worthy of remark – and rebuttal. Many claims the Times make are demonstrably false. Others are the wrong conclusion drawn from poorly understood facts.

“All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California,” the Times wrote. “Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper.”

Here’s where the Times starts to go wrong: “But motives do not matter to the dead in California…”

Perhaps not. But they matter to us. They matter because if we don’t understand what happened, we can’t know how to work to prevent it from happening again.

The Times, of course, is making an emotional appeal for gun control, so its focus is on means, not motive.

“It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency,” the Times claims. “These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection.”

Actually, there has been a substantial increase in women buying guns. Still, the Times is specifically focusing on what it usually calls “assault rifles,” though that term is not in the editorial. It acknowledges that countries such as France, Great Britain and Norway have gun bans, yet have seen incidents of gun violence.

“But at least those countries are trying,” the Times writes. “The United States is not.”

Stop right there. “At least those countries are trying” is never a justification for a policy change. Results matter. Sure, intentions are nice, but results are what we must measure a policy by.

But the Times doesn’t bother with that. It just goes straight for the “assault weapons ban.”

“Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership,” the Times writes.

Two points here: First, California already bans assault weapons, such as the modified AR-15s used in San Bernardino. It doesn’t seem to have worked.

Second, the U.S. already tried an assault weapons ban, under President Bill Clinton. It didn’t have much of an effect. A University of Pennsylvania study concluded, “We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.”

The Times believes that ban didn’t go far enough – its front-page editorial now calls for gun confiscation: “yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.”

This is madness. What would gun confiscation look like? It would necessarily require martial law and the suspension of the Second, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth amendments.

Is this really what the New York Times sees a viable path forward? It’s not.