The local Pittsburgh press this weekend was bubbling with reports about how the shooter was a fan of fringe, online conspiracies, and was afraid Obama was going to take away his guns.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Richard Andrew Poplawski was a young man convinced the nation was secretly controlled by a cabal that would eradicate freedom of speech, take away his guns and use the military to enslave the citizenry.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

He slept with a gun under his pillow in a basement room filled with firearms and ammunition, convinced that Jews controlled the media and President Obama was scheming to take away his arsenal, friends and relatives said Saturday...[A friend] said Poplawski usually was affable and kind, but grew angry recently over fears Obama would outlaw guns.

The local AP dispatch:

Police Chief Nate Harper said the motive for the shooting isn't clear, but friends said the gunman recently had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.

But readers of the Times have been left clueless about whether radical rhetoric from the right about Obama might have prompted Poplawski to ambush three officers and murder them outside his apartment. In fact, in its lone dispatch on the shooting, the Times announced, “No one could explain why [Poplawski] did what he did on Saturday.”

We're not sure that's accurate.