Everything said by Usul in his comment against my earlier post about guns and the media, is absolutely true, but it doesn’t address my point. Sure, if some shootist takes his gun to the range and blows holes in a paper target all afternoon, it isn’t news; but when a 78 year old woman uses a handgun to defend herself from an intruder intent on robbing and/or raping her, I think it IS news. My real concern is not the specific subject, but is the bias shown by the general media. When some psycho-idiot shoots up a McDonalds or a mall somewhere, his tool is described in great detail, usually as an assault weapon, or worse, as an “assault-like weapon” (a meaningless term) which is nearly never true, but which sounds much scarier than simply saying “pistol” or “rifle”. However, in those few times when the legitimate self defense use of a gun makes the news, its usually described as “a handgun kept near the bed” or something like that. To get away from firearms, another good example is the use of the term SUV. In the media, an SUV is evil entity bent on the destruction of mankind. You can find so many examples of this that it actually becomes funny. Check the papers, if a Toyota sedan veers off the road into a crowd of pedestrians, the item will read something like “The driver lost control of his vehicle and crossed the centerline into a group of people waiting for a bus”. However, if the vehicle is any sort of 4-wheel drive or large sport vehicle, it is more likely to state “The SUV veered across the road to careen into a crowd of helpless people waiting for a bus.” It seems that the driver had no control at all when the SUV decided it had to take out those people. Watch for it, the evil SUV is really easy to find in the general news.