If you want to know how obsessed The New York Times is with gun control in Virginia, take a look at the Web version of its story on John Patrick Bedell, the ill-fated Pentagon shooter. 

In one of its first stories on the subject, the writers shoe-horned the gun control issue into it to no seeming purpose. Of course, the Times did have a purpose: slapping the backward yahoos down South.

“Virginia, which has some of the most lax gun laws in the nation and has been pushing to expand gun rights, has been criticized lately by gun control advocates,” the Times declared. “The state’s General Assembly approved a bill last month allowing people to carry concealed weapons in bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, and the House of Delegates voted to end a 17-year-old measure barring people from buying more than one handgun a month.”

Problem was, the story didn’t report where Bedell bought his guns and ammo. Nor did the story reveal whether the reporters asked and couldn’t find out. And it didn’t report that Bedell was from California until after it fired its shot about Virginia’s gun laws.

The Associated Press divulged that Bedell purchased guns and ammo at a gun range in Sacramento. The Washington Post found a store in Silver Spring. Geography lesson for the Times: Those cities are in California and Maryland, which have “some of the most strict gun laws in the nation,” to borrow the Times’ phraseology. They also have some of the nuttiest liberal public officials in the nation. Anyway, the Times published information about Bedell’s purchases in California a day or so after it misfired on Virginia’s gun laws.

The Times writers may not have known where Bedell bought his guns and ammo when they filed their report. But that invites the obvious question of why they mentioned Virginia’s gun laws. Answer: To pin blame for the shootings on the state’s gun laws, which aren’t strict enough either for the Times or New York City’s liberal mayor, who has spent the last several years blaming crime in his polyglot and benighted city on Virginia.

Here, for instance, is a recent salvo from the Times editorial page: “Richmond lawmakers have callously rejected a gun control proposal sought as a memorial to the 32 students slain in the Virginia Tech massacre. Once more, state senators proved more beholden to the gun lobby’s propaganda and campaign money than to public safety.”

So, because Virginia’s lawmakers do not agree with the Times’ seize-the-guns ideology they are “callous.” And now, this latest little dig: Those crazy Virginians want to let law-abiding citizens carry weapons! No wonder a maniac shot up the Pentagon.

Virginians aren’t “callous” or crazy, of course, and the Times deserves to be called a few things itself. “Left wing” would be a good start, followed by “hopelessly biased.” That is why it publishes ridiculous editorials, and why it permits reporters to editorialize about subjects they know nothing about.

Of course, the Times is perfectly within its rights to editorialize about guns in Virginia. It can permit reporters to editorialize by inserting slickly worded anti-gun propaganda into their stories. But they shouldn’t call the latter news.

And maybe the Times should holster its rhetorical revolver. Virginians who actually know something about guns and crime can debate the issue without its help.