Hundreds of miles from each other, two Americans were shot in similar circumstances last week within the span of about 48 hours. One was a Missouri 16-year-old who got shot and wounded by the man whose door he knocked on thinking it was the one where he was supposed to pick up his younger siblings. The other was a 20-year-old New York woman who was shot dead after accidentally driving into the wrong driveway.
Despite the similarities between the cases, President Joe Biden’s response to the two shootings has been significantly different—raising questions from conservative political analysts and pundits such as Armstrong Williams and Tucker Carlson, who suggested a racial element was involved.
Ralph Yarl (L) and Kaylin Gillis (R). Conservative commentators like Armstrong Williams and Tucker Carlson have accused the Biden administration of giving more relevance to the shooting of the Black teenager despite the two cases being quite similar in their nature.
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While President Joe Biden called up Yarl and spoke with his family on Monday, inviting the teenager to the White House, the president made no mention of Gillis’ death. Yarl is Black and Gillis white.
Newsweek has twice contacted the White House’s press team for comment by email but didn’t receive an immediate reply.
In a tweet published on Tuesday, Biden wrote: “No parent should have to worry that their kid will be shot after ringing the wrong doorbell. We’ve got to keep up the fight against gun violence. And Ralph, we’ll see you in the Oval once you feel better.”
Biden’s failure to address Gillis’ case has caused anger among conservative commentators.
“Biden rightly showed support for Yarel’s family after he was shot for knocking on wrong door. Why didn’t he do same for Kaylin Gillis, who was also killed in a similar situation?” tweeted political analyst and television host Williams. “It’s devastating she died, and the tragedy is further compounded by the disregard for her family.”
Biden rightly showed support for Yarel's family after he was shot for knocking on wrong door.
Why didn't he do same for Kaylin Gillis, who was also killed in a similar situation?
It's devastating she died, and the tragedy is further compounded by the disregard for her family. pic.twitter.com/1mJAZ50uZx
— Armstrong Williams 🇺🇸 (@Arightside) April 19, 2023
Fox News host Carlson raised the question of Biden’s different treatment of the two cases on his show on Tuesday night, accusing the Biden administration of using Yarl’s case to “further divide the country along racial lines.”
Tucker Carlson says the White House is exploiting the shooting of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl to "further divide the country on the basis of race." pic.twitter.com/f7qPCN9Pco
— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) April 19, 2023
Kansas City teenager Ralph Yarl survived after being shot twice by 84-year-old Andrew Lester, a white homeowner. Lester, who shot Yarl in the head a first time and then shot him in the arm after the teen fell down, was arrested and now faces charges of first-degree assault and armed criminal action.
The 20-year-old woman, Kayling Gillis, didn’t survive after being shot by 65-year-old Kevin Monahan in the town of Hebron. Gillis was a passenger in the vehicle Monahan fired at. According to Washington County Sheriff Jeffrey Murphy, Monahan has shown “no remorse” for shooting and killing the young woman. Monahan is also white.
In both cases, there was no reported interaction between the teenager and the young woman and the men who shot them. According to authorities, neither of the two young people posed any threat to the homeowners.
But the two cases have been treated differently by the White House.
“There’s little doubt that Biden has treated the cases differently because his base is invested in the narrative of structural racism and violence against the Black community being endemic in America,” Dr. Thomas Gift, associate professor of political science in the School of Public Policy at University College London (UCL) told Newsweek.
“Rightly or wrongly, there’s clearly a racial element at play, where the Yarl case fits the preferred progressive storyline and the Gillis one doesn’t. Both cases are tragic, but only one has political purchase for Democrats.”
On the other hand, episodes of gun violence are not uncommon in the U.S. According to data compiled by the non-profit group Brady: United Against Gun Violence using the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) statistics on fatal firearm injuries, an estimated 321 people are shot in the U.S. every day. Among those, an estimated 111 people are killed, while 210 survive.
Research shows that gun violence affects Black people much more than white people. A 2022 poll conducted by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that one in five Americans say they have experienced gun violence in their lives.
But the study also found significant racial and ethnic disparities in people’s experience of gun violence. The poll found that Black Americans and Hispanic Americans were more than twice as likely as white Americans to say either they themselves or someone they know has experienced gun violence.
Brady found that Black Americans experience 10 times the gun homicides, 18 times the gun assault injuries, and nearly three times the fatal shootings by police as white Americans.
According to a 2020 study by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, young Black Americans aged between 15 and 34 experience the highest rates of gun homicides across all demographics.
The independent nonpartisan policy institute Center for American Progress states that “the lack of investment in communities of color, coupled with weak gun laws, has resulted in devastatingly high rates of gun violence for Black and brown people.”
Newsweek also contacted Yarl’s attorneys, Ben Crump and Lee Merritt, for comment by email and Kaylin Gillis’ through the GoFundMe page set up after the woman’s death.