5-Year-Old Boy Shot in Head

FACTS

Last weekend in Wilson, North Carolina, 5-year-old Cannon Hinnant was fatally shot in the head after a neighbor approached him riding his bike and pointed a gun at his head. Another neighbor and Cannon’s 7 and 8-year-old sisters were witnesses. Darius Sessoms, 25, is being held on charges of first-degree murder. The motive is unknown, but authorities say they do not believe it was random. Sessoms, who was said to be on drugs and hallucinating at the time of the crime, had known Cannon’s family for years and was neighbors with his father. He previously served prison time for felony drug possession, felony firearms, and drug charges.

5-year-old Cannon Hinnant's father details his son's horrifying murder: 'You can't imagine what it's like to hold your son in your arms with a gunshot wound to the head' https://t.co/5wfIk42x2i

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) August 15, 2020

RIGHT

The Right asks the question, “Where are the riots? Where are the protests?” It was noted that despite having over 300,000 tweets, Twitter placed Cannon’s hashtag as #30 on the list of trending tweets, falling below posts with only 30,000, 20,000, and even 8,000 mentions.

“Finally, there is just no getting around the fact that if a white man walked up to his black neighbor’s five year old child and executed him in broad daylight, it would be massively huge news.”

Matt Walsh, columnist for The Daily Wire

Professor Gad Saad, an evolutionary psychologist, agreed, asking the question of what the narrative would be had the “races of the perpetrator and the victim” been reversed.

“Hinnant wasn’t murdered by an agent of the State.”

Neither was Ahmaud Arbery. Neither was Trayvon Martin. Yet those are household names and they were in the headlines for weeks.

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) August 14, 2020

LEFT

The Left argues that the situations are completely different: the killer, who was not a government employee, was quickly arrested and is facing “swift & appropriate response by the criminal justice system.” Those on the Left argue that while Cannon’s story is tragic, “acts of violence by the state must be viewed in the context of past systemic injustice and thus deserve widespread attention.” In a Facebook post that went viral, social worker Chris Bidorini noted that those responsible for the deaths of multiple black men were arrested “ONLY after national attention, petitions, and marches.” The issues of police brutality and systemic racism are viewed to be the pressing issue by the Left and are argued to have caused “an ‘epidemic‘ of police violence that deserves pointed and constant media attention.”