Guns Used in Self-Defense? Apparently, Not News

My friend Cam Edwards proclaimed he was going on a "rant" on Friday night on his radio show "Cam & Company" (on Sirius satellite radio and at nranews.com) about the latest example of the national media ignoring stories of armed self-defense. While the networks were charmed by the story of 14-year-old Michael Six fending off a burglar with a baseball bat in Arizona, there was this eyebrow-raising story from the Orlando Sentinel:

An armed citizen surprised four men who robbed him at gunpoint last week.

After being ordered to his knees, Russel Olofson warned the men that "they should think about it," according to an Orlando police report released this week.

A private investigator with military training, Olofson, 24, told police the robbers snatched his cell phone and a wallet containing his concealed-weapon permit shortly before 10 p.m. Friday outside Ridge Club Apartments.

After the robbers took his items, Olofson stood up, drew his Springfield XD sub-compact 9 mm handgun "and fired two rounds toward male #1 with the silver handgun, possibly striking him," the report states. "Males #2, #3, and #4 then ran southeast . . . and male #1 ran northeast . . ."

A search by police quickly turned up a pistol likely used in the holdup, the report said.

The .45-caliber Ruger pistol and clothing believed to have been worn by male 1 were found in the backyard of a home on Alrix Drive, reports state. The serial numbers on the pistol had been scratched off, a common sign the weapon may have been stolen.

Cam felt a story like this had all of the inherent drama and suspense that the networks can find in a human-interest story. But we suspected that TV assignment editors like "kids with a bat" stories better than a trained man with a gun.