While newspapers and television newscasts frequently report on the dangers of privately owned guns, gun advocates accuse the media of exaggerating the extent of gun violence in order to gain support for gun control measures. For example, the New York Times reported in 2000 that the “incidence of . . . rampage killings appears to have increased [in the past decade].” However, economists John R. Lott Jr. and William Landes claim that those findings are untrue and assert that “the number [of rampage killings] is not changing much over time.”

The Media Research Center—which documents what it claims to be bias in the media—reviewed gun control stories on several television broadcasts from July 1, 1995, through June 30, 1997. The analysts concluded that antigun stories outnumbered progun stories on the networks by a ratio of eleven to...