AP Photo/Brennan Linsley

It’s not difficult to tell that there is a strong anti-gun bias amongst the media. We see examples all of the time.

However, many in the media try to be either subtle or actively try to suppress their biases. They’re not particularly blatant if they can help it. After all, they want to at least appear to be an unbiased source of information.

Sometimes, though, it’s like they don’t even try.

A prime example comes from a news story titled, “Pregnant Woman Shot Near Virginia Capitol Right After Failed Gun Debate.”

Outrage was still rising Tuesday when Levar Stoney received the text message from his police chief.

The mayor of Richmond had spent the morning speaking to crowds outside the state Capitol ahead of a special legislative session on gun control. He’d invoked the victims of a May 31 mass shooting in Virginia Beach and urged lawmakers to pass “common sense” gun laws.

“There is an opportunity to do right,” he’d said. “That day is today.”

Instead, the Republican-controlled legislature had adjourned after 90 minutes without considering a single bill.

Then, as Stoney, a Democrat, attended an event that afternoon on traffic safety, his phone buzzed with another one of the messages that, in his 18 months on the job, he’d learned to dread.

A pregnant woman had been shot in south Richmond, barely five miles from the Capitol, Police Chief William Smith texted. It was unclear whether she’d survive.

Except, the two things have nothing to do with one another.

The pregnant woman was shot in an event that was apolitical and was a crime that while far too common in our country, had nothing to do with the Virginia GOP adjourning from a special legislative session designed to look like lawmakers were “doing something” in the wake of a mass shooting. Missing from the discussion is how none of the measures on the table for consideration would have had any impact on what transpired in Virginia Beach.

Then why link the two events?

The answer is simple. They want to create as much outrage as possible. The effort is to make people angry enough that the GOP-controlled legislature will pass gun control to quell that outrage. They’re trying to shame Republicans into capitulation.

A pregnant woman being shot in Richmond, VA has more to do with countless other factors than it does with what the Republicans did or didn’t do during a legislative session that day. They could easily have done everything Northam wanted and that woman would still have been shot. That’s unfortunate, but crime is a complex problem. Arguing gun control would somehow change that is naive at best, idiotic at worst.

What’s worse is that there’s no way the media and lawmakers trying to make this connection don’t realize it. There’s zero chance they believe the two events are linked except by coincidence. They know it with every fiber of their being.

They just don’t want you to know it.

So, they present it with a headline and write an inflammatory piece designed to fire people up and create outrage.

Then they get upset when you point out how biased they are.