Why print the truth when it ruins the ''guns are bad and easy to get'' story?

News of a "firearms accident" in a small town in the Miami Valley this week has drawn nation attention, and although everyone from the Dayton Daily News to the Associated Press (USA Today, CBS News and countless others unquestioningly ran the AP version) have written on it, the facts about the firearm that was involved have yet to reported anywhere but on the Internet blogosphere.

First, from the AP story, Rapper kills himself with pen gun:

Steven Zorn had put the pen gun to his head and clicked before, apparently thinking it was jammed and would not work.

But on the third try, the tiny silver pistol went off as the 22-year-old budding rap artist was drinking to celebrate an impending record deal. He died at a hospital.

The Nov. 18 shooting at Zorn's home in this rural village of 2,000, about 50 miles northeast of Dayton, is believed to have been accidental, according to family, friends and law enforcement officials.

"Steven had a career and his dreams all ahead of him," said Zorn's mother, Lisa McCoy-Horn. She said she wants lawmakers to outlaw pen guns, which are small-caliber, single-shot weapons that resemble pens.

Any accidental death, whether with a firearm or any other mechanic object or just from falling down the stairs, is tragic. But all objectivity (and factual accuracy) goes right out the window when the death involves a gun...

In this case, mom blames the gun, forgetting all about the fact that being in possession of the firearm while he was drinking is already against the law, proving that no matter how well-intentioned, bans just can't stop drunken stupidity. The sad tragedy of this is young person knowingly put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger, not once, but three times, because he was drinking. Yet mom isn't advocating alcohol prohibition now, is she?

But even that isn't the whole story...because as Newsbusters.org blogger Bob Owens notes, anyone with an Internet connection (yes, that means the journalists who wrote these stories!) could have found out that:

..."Seventy-one years ago Congress passed the National Firearms Act of 1934, which specifically mentions weapons such as pen guns in the classification of "any other weapon" (AOW), and makes them as highly-restricted by the law as machine guns, bazookas, and land mines."

And thus blogger Bob Owens does what the establishment media could not or did not want to do: inform the public that pen guns are already among the most restricted weapons in the country. Of course, as Owens concludes "you wouldn't want to spoil a good tragedy, especially if it serves your political agenda."