While I no longer expect the mainstream media to not be biased in their reporting, I do expect them to be factual. They can be plenty biased in their reporting without mangling the actual facts available, after all.

However, CNN–an outfit that still likes to bill themselves as both trusted and trustworthy–has a habit of not necessarily doing that. They routinely get labeled “fake news” by people like President Trump and it infuriates them.

The thing is, though, if they don’t want to be labeled fake news, they probably should stop doing stupid stuff like this.

A CNN article on a recent Kansas City bar shooting mischaracterized the shooter’s criminal history to blame the killing on Missouri’s gun laws.

Police identified 29-year-old Jahron Swift as the shooter who killed one woman and injured 15 before he was killed by an armed guard January 19. CNN published a report Wednesday saying Swift likely would have gone to prison over a weapons charge if not for the state’s 2017 permitless carry law. However, the report obfuscated the date of Swift’s charge to suggest the law let him off the hook for it.

All of Swift’s prior arrests and weapons charges came before Missouri’s gun law went into effect. Even after it was enacted on Jan. 1, 2017, the permitless carry law would not have nullified Swift’s pending unlawful use of weapons charges. But regardless of the permitless carry law, Swift was convicted of two felonies and therefore could not have legally carried a gun.

Court records show that Swift had two weapons charges in 2016 and 2017. The 2016 charge was for unlawful use of a weapon and marijuana possession, according to court records,” the CNN report reads. “Swift was charged in 2017 with unlawful concealed carry, which could have revoked his probation on the previous charge and increased his chances of going to prison.… However, the second charge came as [the] Missouri legislature adopted measures that permitted concealed weapons being carried without a permit.”

Swift was not on probation at the time of his second arrest, as the report insinuates, and he received a drug felony charge in addition to the weapons charge allegedly nullified by the state’s gun laws.

In other words, they pushed wrong information on permitless carry and its applicability to this particular case.

Now, if I felt charitable, I’d argue that they simply don’t know anything about guns and gun laws, so they were just hilariously wrong. I can’t do that, though. I can’t do that because CNN has a history of letting their left-leaning bias color their reporting, something that seems to come from the top down.

Further, a reporters job is to check and make sure things are what they seem. If they had, they’d have seen that Swift’s actions weren’t remotely protected.

The problem is that CNN has set themselves up as vehemently anti-gun. Anyone who doubts that should go and rewatch the so-called town hall that they held right after Parkland. That was a complete disaster with no attempt to have a calm, reasonable debate on the subject of guns, gun control, or gun rights. It was just shy of a lynch mob.

When you look at everything in totality, it’s extremely difficult to come to any conclusion other than CNN outright lied about the Kansas City shooting in an attempt to undermind constitutional carry, both in Missouri and throughout the nation.