Brian Montopoli at the CBS News Public Eye blog writes:

As this latest tragedy [VA Tech -js] once again illustrates, however, the availability of guns is a major issue in this country. The press corps doesn’t need a debate in the halls of Congress to recognize that. Certainly, the international press corps has focused on the issue in the wake of the shootings; the British-based Economist, for example, put an American flag in the shape of a gun on its cover and proclaimed that the country’s “politicians are still running away from a debate about guns.”

In America, meanwhile, many media outlets have been either ignoring the gun control issue or urging citizens to “leave the debate for another day.”

But what day would that be? In order to delve into a big issue, the media usually needs what’s known as a “hook” – a news event that focuses people’s attention on larger questions. The tragedy at Virginia Tech is such an event.

[…]

…I’m hard pressed to think of a better time for the media to focus on a huge issue that isn’t going away anytime soon.

So what Montopoli appears to say is that since media thinks there’s a problem of gun availability in this country, it’s up to media to fan the flames of the people to demand more gun control laws. Notice that he doesn’t want to use a story of how some citizen prevented a killing or ended a tragedy as the “hook” for the “discussion” but rather the horrific and rare shooting at Virginia Tech as such.

Help me out here, folks, I’m trying to remember the last time CBS or NBC or CNN or the New York Times or the Washington Post or National Public Radio covered a story of a law abiding citizen defending himself or his family with a firearm or stopping a rampage.

Here’s a list of some that come to mind:

End of list.

Update: NewsBusters provides a handy list of major news media ignoring the issue.