TV Media bias: NBC’s Magnum P.I. and Chicago PD show more failed defensive gun uses

Television show bias against guns is never-ending. Except for two episodes on Paramount’s Yellowstone, you won’t see an entertainment television show with a civilian successfully using a gun defensively. Instead, something always seems to go wrong when guns are used defensively (from being fatally shot by the criminal without stopping the crime to getting in the way of police to continually having the gun stolen and used in a crime to an accidental shooting). In fact, after the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision earlier this year, television shows seem to be showing more bad defensive gun uses than ever before. These episodes of NBC’s Magnum P.I. (Season 5, Episode 3, February 26, 2023) and Chicago PD (Season 10, Episode 15, March 1, 2023) are no different. Both episodes show problems with defensive gun use. In Magnum P.I., a couple of criminals explain that they had to shoot and murder a homeowner who tried to defend himself with a gun. In Chicago PD, two robbers are scared off by an undercover police officer. The woman being robbed had a gun but could not reach it when the robbers were there. When she finally got her gun, she tried to shoot the robbers in the back as they ran away, but that would have been a crime. Fortunately, the off-duty officer stopped her.

It is somewhat depressing that 3.7 million viewers saw this misinformation on Magnum P.I. and 5.03 million saw Chicago PD. In our collection of 124 cases where armed civilians have stopped active shooting attacks, there is not one case that corresponds to the examples shown in these various TV shows where a concealed carry permit holder accidentally shoots a bystander or where they caused a bystander to be shot.

Real Clear Investigations: There Are Far More Defensive Gun Uses Than Murders in America. Here’s Why You Rarely Hear of Them

Real Clear Politics: Faulty FBI Data Obscures Successful Defensive Gun Use

Real Clear Investigations: How the FBI Undercounts Armed Citizen Responders to Mass Killers — and Media Play Along

More examples of these types of shows are available here. 

Here is a video on Hollywood’s bias against guns.