Dan Wos, writing over at Ammoland, touched on this recently.

Mainstream media has been bending over backward to justify the indictment of Colin Gray for purchasing the firearm, while the public seems to be caught up in this portion of the story. There has been a failure to discuss the true cause of this crime, mental health issues, and an obsessive focus on guns by the media.

In this case, dishonest media outlets have people enraged at the father for purchasing the gun but avoid discussing the fact that the father did not participate in the act of violence. The media also refuses to address the mental instability of the child, a problem that we see much more frequently in recent times. However, focusing on the actual human behavior takes the focus off firearms and might shine a light on some societal issues for which the media might share responsibility. They don’t care about the mental deterioration of our children but really want American gun owners disarmed.

After covering gun-related crimes and firearm legislation for years, it has become glaringly apparent that the political left and its media sources were covering this story in such a way that would set the table to push for more gun legislation. Such legislation might include mandatory, national, in-home lock-up of firearms with inspections or other laws that would make firearm possession impossible for parents of children under a certain age.

Dan brings up an excellent point.

Now, I'm pissed at the dad for buying his son an AR-15 knowing what he knew at the time and not making sure the child couldn't access the weapon without supervision. He was very wrong about that in my book.

But the media's inane focus on this rather than the mental health of the 14-year-old alleged killer is even more wrong.

We may never be able to heal all mental illnesses. We may not even be able to treat them all in such a way that they become non-issues. However, at least by focusing our attention there, we can at least work to prevent the next mass shooting, mass stabbing, arson massacre, bombing, or whatever other form of mass murder is on someone's mind.

"But mass killers don't have significant mental health issues according to experts."

That may or may not be true. What they're actually saying is none of them have been diagnosed with significant mental health issues, not that there aren't any there. The fact that someone wants to massacre innocent people is a pretty good indicator that they have a significant mental health problem, so you're not going to sell me on the idea that there isn't anything except some mild issues.

It also assumes that psychology has identified every mental health problem a person can suffer from. That seems presumptuous to me. Humans aren't that infallible, after all.

But Dan argues that this is all a means to an end, that end being pushing for gun control, and he's again right. That's what the media wants and they will try to reframe literally anything they can to advance gun control, including ignoring the real issue for mass murders like at Apalachee High.

That's because they don't care about human life, only taking people's guns away for good. They just delude themselves into think that the latter translates as the former.