But their searches were (at least partially) political in nature, so a result of a national news site talking of a local news would be relevant. "gun control" is location dependent is there is a protest at your city
I guess it comes down to what a search engine should assume your reason for searching is based on what you enter. If the query doesn't strongly imply I'm looking for "news about X"; "local opinion on X"; or "closest place related to X", I'd like it to assume I'm doing "research on X" so I get results that do not take my arbitrary location into account.