A bill to grant constitutional carry to Louisiana residents advanced Tuesday night. This is significant news for gun rights supporters in the state.

Lousiana looked to pass a similar bill last year, it clearing the House but fizzling in the Senate following the shooting in Uvalde.

Now, there’s a better chance of it passing.

That’s not the story, though. It should be, but the Shreveport Times has an interesting way to frame the story.

Titled, “Louisiana lawmaker whose granddaughter wields AR-15 advances bill to expand gun rights,” it doesn’t get better in the body of the piece.

Louisiana advanced a bill late Tuesday night that would expand gun rights in the state with a bill from a lawmaker whose 6-year-old granddaughter is “quite proficient” with an AR-15 assault rifle.

Republican Oil City state Rep. Danny McCormick’s House Bill 131 would allow Louisiana adults 18 and older to carry handguns without permits or training as is currently required.

It cleared the House Criminal Justice Committee on an 8-1 vote.

“The question is why don’t we trust law-abiding citizens with their Second Amendment Rights?” McCormick said in an interview with USA Today Network.

This is clearly about a constitutional carry bill. This is a topic that has nothing to do with AR-15s, kids, or anything of the sort. Not in Louisiana and not anywhere else.

So why include any of that?

I can’t help but think that this is little more than a sad attempt to make Rep. Danny McCormick look like the pro-gun fringe; like he’s some kind of extremist.

For anti-gun folks, the idea of a six-year-old girl learning to become proficient with something as horrific as the AR-15 is a terrible thing.

Those of us familiar with the gun know that the AR-15 is an adaptable firearm that works for shooters of all sizes and that there are some AR-pattern rifles chambered in .22 that are ideal for young shooters learning how to use a gun.

In short, we’ll see this and think it’s kind of cool.

But it seems the writer of this piece isn’t in that camp.

The irony is that folks who haven’t picked a side aren’t likely to do much but wonder at the inclusion. It doesn’t really have anything to do with constitutional carry and even if McCormick said it, why relevance did it have to the topic at hand?

Had the story had anything to do with youth shooting, AR-15s, kids, or anything with even a tenuous connection to the comment, I might not have remarked on it. I may well have figured that there was some ground for its inclusion, even if I personally felt it unnecessary.

Yet for a professional journalist to start off a piece that way means that even at the more local level, they’ve given up any pretense of being unbiased reporters and are just finding more ways to sneak commentary into their “news.”

Honestly, the Shreveport Times should be ashamed of this one.

As for constitutional carry in Louisiana, my hope is that lawmakers do the right thing and pass it. No, the governor may not sign it, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t pass, and Gov. John Bel Edwards is a rare conservative Democrat, so who knows?