On Wednesday evening, the CBS Evening News and the NBC Nightly News both seized on a few instances of school teachers -- a tiny number out of more than three million teachers nationally -- who accidentally fired guns in schools as the networks tried to undermine the push for training some teachers to carry guns.
CNN's Early Start earlier in the day also hyped one of the California story as anchors Dave Briggs and Christine Romans also marveled over a gun control group placing 7,000 shoes on the Capitol Lawn to commemorate gun-related child deaths.
Referring to gun accidents in California and in Virginia, NBC host Lester Holt talked up the "outrage" over the incidents: "With school safety and the debate over arming teachers in the headlines, outrage is erupting over two incidents in our nation's schools that could have easily turned deadly."
After correspondent Miguel Almaguer began his report by informing viewers that a teacher in California with law enforcement experience accidentally shot a gun into the ceiling, causing minor injuries to three students from fragments, the NBC reporter then showed a soundbite of an unidentified man dismissing the idea of arming teachers: "We're talking about arming teachers, and the security personnel that are trained can't seem to make it work."
Almaguer then recounted the case of a teacher in Alexandria, Virginia, who accidentally fired a gun in his office without even injuring anyone. Then came a soundbite of school superintendent Lois Berlin fretting over the possibility of arming teachers: "When we talk about arming teachers, that's what worries me because we had this happen with someone who is a highly trained officer."
The NBC correspondent then ominously concluded: "Coast to coast, students put in danger by the very people in charge of their safety."
On the CBS Evening News, host Jeff Glor included the California case in the opening tease: "Also tonight, three California high school students are injured when a teacher accidentally fires a weapon."
As he introduced the report, Glor warned that the California case was not "an isolated incident." Correspondent Mireya Villareal began by recalling the California case before moving to that in Virginia. She then brought up a third case from a couple of weeks ago in which a school teacher with a mental disorder was arrested for firing a gun in his classroom. She then fretted: "Incidents like these come amid calls to arm teachers in schools nationwide."
On the same day's Early Start, CNN anchors Briggs and Romans also brought up the California story in a brief after they recalled the liberal anti-gun group protesting in D.C.
Notably, a few weeks ago, when ABC and FNC both gave substantial attention to the case of two women who were caught on video using guns to defend themselves from an armed robbery, CBS, NBC and CNN all seemed uninterested in showing viewers an example of how beneficial a gun can be to fight off a criminal as they completely ignored the story.
In fact, all one has to do is visit websites like selfdefensegunstories.com or concealedamerica.com, or just do a Google search to find many recent local reports of people who have used guns to defend themselves from home invasions, robberies, sexual assaults, and other crimes all over the country. There are even recent cases of armed citizens rescuing lone police officers who were being overpowered by criminals -- one in Jacksonville, Florida, and one in Springfield, Utah.
Other notable cases are women fighting off sex offenders in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Blakely, Georgia. And there were elderly homeowners who defended themselves in Tampa, Florida; Mitchellville, Maryland; and Kanawha County, West Virginia.
There's also a man in Oswego, Illinois, who used an AR-15 to defend his neighbors from a knife attack.
