A woman was shot and killed at a Tulsa, Oklahoma shopping center Friday night after she opened fire on customers. While police are still investigating a possible motive and haven’t released the woman’s identify, the Tulsa World reports that the woman’s rampage was apparently stopped by a concealed carry holder before she was able to inflict any injuries.

Who knows how bad this could have been had an armed citizen not been around to stop the shooter before she actually hit anyone? Sadly, because she didn’t actually kill or injure anyone, this story isn’t of nearly as much interest to the media as it would be otherwise, and this story will get virtually no national news coverage because there wasn’t enough carnage inflicted. The media would much rather talk about lives lost than lives saved.

Even locally, the story isn’t really getting a lot of attention. There was a brief writeup in the local paper and a short segment on local news channels, but that’s about it. Granted, this wasn’t a situation that called for hours of live, uninterrupted coverage, but to me this story is just as important as it would be if the suspect had actually taken any innocent lives, and it’s worth far more attention than what its received so far.

In fact, one Tulsa news station managed to report on the story and completely miss the fact that an armed citizen saved lives. From KTUL-TV:

Tulsa police say a woman has died after a shooting in north Tulsa Friday evening. According to investigators a man shot and killed the woman near East 54th Street North and North Peoria Avenue. Police say it was all caught on security footage outside a local store in the area and that’s why they now have the suspect in custody.

KTUL’s story makes it sound like this guy just walked up to the woman and shot her, and was then taken into custody. There’s no mention of the fact that the woman was shooting at customers, the man was a concealed carry holder, or that he was questioned and released by police with no expectation of an arrest.

This is journalistic malpractice at best, and an outright deception at worst. From what the Tulsa Police are saying, it sounds like this armed citizen deserves a medal. KTUL’s reporting makes it sound like he deserves to be locked up. Hopefully the station will update their story, but for now their report stands a stark reminder of the media’s failure to treat stories of armed self-defense with the same attention they give stories of murder and mayhem.