Talk show host Erick Erickson said much of the media’s attention on last weekend’s Dollar General store shooting in Jacksonville, Florida with laced with narratives that benefitted the Democrat party.
“They’re excluding other conversations and willfully so,” said Erickson. “Have you heard the names Steve Blizzard, Ronald Jeffers, Scott Leavitt, Shirley Leavitt?” Have you heard those four names?”
Erickson pointed out that those victims were all killed by a veteran in Hampton, Georgia, last month who was suffering from mental illness. The host noted the killer happened to be Black.
“He did not use an AR-15,” Erickson said. “He then shot several police officers as the police started a manhunt, he wound up getting killed in the process and suffered from mental illness. Four white people getting killed by a Black shooter did not make national news, did it?”
Erickson said the weekend of a mass shooting in Alabama at a Sweet 16 party; there was also a shooting of several white people in New York. A woman had turned into someone’s driveway. Both the shooter and the victim were white, and the story received little to no national airplay.
“You didn’t hear about the girl in the driveway that got killed,” he said. “When it became obvious that there was no AR-15s involved and it was Black-on-Black violence in Alabama, that [story] faded. The kid that survived got a lot of media attention that weekend.”
Erick Erickson stated that one of the common themes emerging from mass shooting stories is the killer always has a manifesto.
“They always have a manifesto,” he added. “Notice how we don’t have the manifesto from the shooter in Tennessee yet. The media is without curiosity as to what was in that manifesto. Why does the media lack any curiosity about that manifesto?”
