Charles Cooke of National Review Online questions mainstream media reports about this week’s Nashville shooting.

Terry Moran said the following on television: …

“The shooter identified herself as a transgender person. The state of Tennessee earlier this month passed and the governor signed a bill that banned transgender medical care for minors as well as a law that prohibited adult entertainment as well as male and female impersonators after a series of drag show controversies in that state.”

I would like to know what is supposed to come next in Moran’s sequence. The shooter was transgender; Tennessee had passed some laws she didn’t like; therefore . . .

Therefore what? Therefore what happened makes sense? Therefore she had no choice but to murder some nine-year-olds? Therefore the State of Tennessee is guilty in some sense? What?

I’d like to know why these facts were raised as they were. Because, to be quite honest with you, I cannot see an innocent explanation for Moran’s having juxtaposed them with the news he was relaying. …

… Elsewhere, … an NBC reporter named Benjamin Ryan tweeted that “NBC has ID’d the Nashville school shooter as [], 28, who identifies as transgender and had no previous criminal record. Nashville is home to the Daily Wire, a hub of anti-trans activity by @MattWalshBlog, @BenShapiro and @MichaelJKnowles.”

Okay. Therefore what? Therefore Walsh, Shapiro, and Knowles are ultimately responsible? Therefore the shooter should have targeted those people instead? Therefore what? I’d like to know.

I cannot help but notice that the press has found a clever way of having it both ways in situations such as these. If, rather than six Christians being murdered by a transgender activist, a Christian activist had murdered six transgender people, both Moran and Ryan would have said . . . well, they’d have said exactly the same thing, wouldn’t they? Whatever happens, the blame runs only in one direction. “Someone did something horrible — oh, and while you’re here, have you heard about the right-wing speech or legislation that we’d like you to think explains it?”