During the NYC draft/race riots of 1863, one of the targets of the mob's ire was the New York Times, whose offices were defended by staff (including the paper's founder) manning Gatling guns. Was this just random, or was the crowd's anger targeted?

by td4999
mikedash

The idea that the Times building was attacked by a mob, and that machine guns were used to repel its members, was a bit of myth-making spread by the newspaper itself during the 1920s. Unfortunately, the story doesn't actually stand up under investigation, as I demonstrated in an earlier responses which you can read here.