Let's Blame the Gun!

Today on my local news there was a story about a guy who was pulled over about 20 minutes from here. I don’t know why he was initially pulled over, but the cops ultimately searched his car. They found 12 pounds of marijuana and $250,000 in cash. Having reason enough to search his home, they made the biggest bust for that department ever recorded. There was an excess of three tons of pot worth well over six million dollars.
There was no mention of a scuffle, no resist of arrest, no violent tendency whatsoever… so although the guy did certainly break the law in the manner that he did, I don’t understand why the following picture keeps accompanying this story (with top billing picture creds) even though it is only mentioned once on TV as "a gun that was found" and in print it isn't even mentioned at all:
No, I actually do understand. It’s the media’s way of making sure that an evil gun is represented so that in the minds of the viewer, guns are linked to all crimes. Keep people scared and uninformed and you have them right where you want them.