WASHINGTON — Major media outlets are still trying to understand how 34-year-old Aaron Alexis, the man allegedly responsible for killing at least twelve people and injuring several others at the Washington Navy Yard in DC this morning, could be a black man.
“My first thought was a false flag, but I don’t really believe in conspiracies like that,” said NBC’s Chuck Todd, who earlier this afternoon misidentified the shooter on Twitter. “Still, there’s something confusing about a mass shooter being black. My media training tells me black people only shoot one or two people at a time, usually in poor neighborhoods.”
CBS News executive producer Charlie Kaye echoed Todd’s confusion. “From Columbine to Sandy Hook, we’ve learned that these crazed gunmen are usually pencil-necked white kids with eyes like saucers. A mass shooting is the one kind of shooting where you don’t expect the suspect to be black,” admitted Kaye.
“I could see it if this were a gang-related shooting, but the Navy doesn’t really count as a gang,” added Kaye.
Alexis was arrested in 2004 for firing a gun in Seattle and again in 2010 for firing a gun in Fort Worth, information that only further confused the media.
“How is an African American with two prior gun arrests, one in Texas of all places, not still in jail?” asked Sean Hannity of Fox News. “It just doesn’t make sense. Did he think he was in Chicago?”
Megan Berry of the Washington Post reported that police originally suspected “a white male in a tan outfit,” which she says “would have made a lot more sense.”
“Now that we know Alexis is black, we’re not sure what to think. My first thought was that he was a terrorist, but he didn’t have a beard or an adopted Muslim name like the Beltway snipers,” said Berry, referring to the October 2002 killing spree carried out by John Allen Muhammed and Lee Boyd Mavo, who were also black.
“So then I thought maybe he was mentally ill, but do African Americans suffer from mental illness?” Berry wondered. “I thought that was a white thing. I’m all about breaking down racial barriers, but not when it comes to mass murder.”
