Gutfeld: 'Thrill kill' doesn't fit media's narrative on race

Reaction to shooting death of college athlete in Oklahoma

This is a rush transcript from "The Five," August 22, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GREG GUTFELD, CO-HOST: So by now, you've heard of the murder of this young Australian man, Christopher Lane. The media has a motive, burden. Yes, when you're bored, you kill people.

But by blaming bored -- I mean, you can ignore recent tweets by one suspect who boasted hating white people. The suspected shooter riddled in gang signs and gang colors and bragged about knocking out five white people since the Zimmerman verdict.

If you are not familiar with this knocking out trend, it is where gangs cold-cock strangers, sometimes killing them.

The media stayed away from this, even though it's a hate crime, it's not their kind of hate crime.

Given the tweets and the gang stuff, will the Justice Department see this as a hate crime? I don't think so. It fits no storyline found on HBO's "Newsroom" or "Law & Order." Yes, "Law & Order", the favorite show among shut ins and their double stuff Oreos. They're planning a Trayvon Martin episode, calling it an American tragedy.

But the other American tragedy are those producers and networks and hacks who accept violence through unconscious bigotry. They just don't think it's fair to demand from a community what it demands from their own. Even if the crime isn't about race, and maybe it isn't, it's an evil act, rooted in destructive lifestyle and broken communities.

In the media's eyes, a black teen is invisible, until he is a body. And a dead Australian is just a price you pay to be politically correct.

Hey, Katie, how are you?

KATIE PAVLICH, GUEST CO-HOST: Good. How are you?

GUTFELD: Do you buy this boredom thing? They were just bored?

PAVLICH: You know, I don't think that the bored is correct term. I think that these were teenagers who didn't have productive things to do, as we see when teenagers aren't given productive things to do.

But I think the key here that no one really wants to talk about is that these guys came from broken homes. The guy accused of pulling the trigger, James Edwards, posted pictures of himself, you know, wielding firearms in an inappropriate and disrespectful way on his Vine account, on social media. His mother is in jail, she is not around. So, that means that he is not spending time with his mother.

The district attorney said that these kids were running around the apartment complex, basically raising themselves. And there was a gang initiation issue here as well. They were reports saying that these guys were involved in gang initiation, that there were more kids on the list of people to be taken out that day.

And it really comes down to them not having the guidance they need and not having more productive things to do.

GUTFELD: That's a good point. There was one gentleman who's, I mean, I believe one of his son, his name is James Johnson, son was on one of this hit list, and he is the guy that I guess raised the idea it was a gang initiation thing, let's roll that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES JOHNSON, CALLED POLICE ON SUSPECTS: I don't think it was at random. I think it was an initiation.

REPORTER: Gang initiation.

JOHNSON: As I understand, after that happened, there was a list that pops up with my son's name on the top of the list and four others they were going to bump off.

REPORTER: So you think that the early killing, even though they didn't know who Chris Lane was, it could have been a gang initiation?

JOHNSON: I believe so.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUTFELD: So, Bob, Mediaite, Web site for media hacks like myself, points out that the media routinely will -- like in the Zimmerman case will bring up race, but avoid describing like the race characteristics in Chris Lane's killing. Is that a fair point?

BOB BECKEL, CO-HOST: Yes, I think that's a fair point. But let's go back to the point about whether it was a hate crime or not.

GUTFELD: Yes.

BECKEL: It seems to me once this guy said on -- and he typed out that he hated white people. I do think it's a gang -- it has an awful lot of similarities to the gang initiation rites in Los Angeles that I've heard about.

I think the Justice Department, if they were investigating a hate crime, even though it won't bring a death penalty, which I'm against anyway. But it seems to me, you could broaden this out to a bigger issue than simply just being bored.

GUTFELD: Eric, do you believe it matters whether it's a gang?

ERIC BOLLING, CO-HOST: No. We're talking but who cares? It is a hate crime. In fact, he tweeted, "#hate them," 90 percent of white people are mean, #hate them. He literally said this is a hate crime, who cares? If convicted, they're going to get life behind bars. They can't get the death penalty because they're under 18.

My issue is that the media is not calling this what this is. These are two black kids, the shooter is black, he killed a white guy, he said he hates white people, I hate them, #hate them.

This is a black on white violence that the media doesn't like. It doesn't fit their debate. They want to hear white on black crime. They don't want to talk about black on black crime and they don't want to talk about black on white crime.

The only thing that fits the rundown on MSNBC seems to be white on black crime.

GUTFELD: What about this, Dana? The fact that it almost feels like since the Trayvon Martin stuff, a game of like race poker, where, you know, I see your white on black crime and I raise you with our black on white crime. Is it just better to look at the decline of the family and a destructive culture and the color of skin? Or is it important?

DANA PERINO, CO-HOST: That's why I've always instinctively been against hate crime legislation, because crime is crime. And as soon as you start trying to define it, then it's a race crime or is it a hate crime, it's a crime against gays. I think that crime is crime.

And one of the things that bothers me, I do think it matters if it is gang violence, because if that is a resurgent problem in urban areas, or this is not even an urban area. OK, it was 40 to 80 miles -- I think 80 miles from Oklahoma City.

Boredom, I'm not buying it. However, there is not a lot of employment. You do have the broken home problem. There is not a lot of direction.

And in some ways, I think we could take a lesson from our military. I don't know. I think Bob is not going to like this. I just had that idea.

Remember when General Petraeus designed the surge in Iraq, and the point was to go in, you had to stop the violence and then you could then start to deal with the root causes, and you had to get more police in the community? I think maybe that is what we need all across America and if -- localities and municipalities want to participate, then the federal government could probably help them.

We have a lot of vets that came back. We could put them to -- you know, use all of those skills that they learned, the leadership skills that they learned overseas, in order to try to deal with this problem. At least stop it, and then we have to figure out the other problem.

GUTFELD: That is almost how they reduced a lot of killing in Chicago, which is a higher presence of police.

BOLLING: And, you know, why were they bored? They were bored because they didn't have jobs. They weren't working. So, they're sitting around, doing nothing. Let's -- how we're going to keep ourselves busy? Let's kill somebody. Oh, here is one right there, happen to white -- hate white kids, he's white, he's running that way, let's shoot him.

Dana, we had the discussion -- remember we had the discussion on stop and frisk? One of the points we're making -- the point I made was that the crime was very much tied to poverty and jobs, more so than necessarily stop-and-frisk. However, it's not a stop-and-frisk discussion. It's simply -- if we bring more jobs, if more kids are able to hold a job down, maybe they won't be bored and they won't do something as stupid as this.

GUTFELD: Yes, but you know what? There are a lot of people without jobs, who are people, who aren't killing people. If you look at the parallel, crime is going down in United States, while unemployment is stagnant or going up. So, I don't know if that's the case.

Here's the -- go ahead.

PAVLICH: I was going to say on that point, you know, there is boycott -- there is talk in Australia of boycotting the United States, saying it's a dangerous place to be. I really don't think that is fair. I understand that is an international incident. It is an extremely unfortunate incident.

But as Greg points out, crime in America, especially gun crime, has been cut in half since 1992. It is important to remember that this is a gang problem. We see shootings like this happening in gangs, all over the country, mostly in bigger cities. But we do see these things happening in smaller communities as well. And it always comes to a gang problem, not violence problem.

(CROSSTALK)

GUTFELD: Here's a question I've never heard anybody ask. Why are gangs like the blacks and the Crips -- I'm sorry, Crips and the Bloods, looking at handwriting, Bloods and Crips not seen as hate groups? Because they essentially hate each other, Crips don't like Bloods, and Bloods don't like Crips?

BECKEL: Yes. Well, I mean, I suppose you can make that argument. More likely they're engaged in warfare over drugs.

GUTFELD: Yes.

BECKEL: But let me make one point -- Dana said she doesn't like the hate crime legislation. I'm not particularly favorable to it either. Except that in some cases, you don't have anything to fall back on, where in a state, if somebody gets beat up and killed because he's gay, for example, and they get away with it.

GUTFELD: Right.

BECKEL: And then at least the feds got the back up to come in and say it's a hate crime. That is a situation where I think it's fine.

On the question about guns and what they think about it in Australia, we talked about this yesterday. A lot of countries in this world think we're crazy for what we do about guns here. And it is something that has been major conversation piece in other countries because we do allow guns freely to move around in this country. And when you have guns moving around, you get people who are hateful people like this get their hands on it.

PAVLICH: We don't let guns roam around freely in this country.

BECKEL: Yes, we do.

PAVLICH: No, you're required to get a background check when you buy a firearm. The only free guns that are roaming around the country freely are the one that are being passed around illegally --

GUTFELD: Right.

PAVLICH: -- by these gang members.

I want to -- one more thing -- one more thing --

BECKEL: Where do you think they got them?

PAVLICH: One more thing to point out, in this exact case, a .22 caliber pistol was used. It is illegal to own a pistol until you were 21 years old in this country. So, they were breaking the law there, guarantee they broke the law to get it. The person who got it broke the law because they gave it to someone who's not allowed to own. This has nothing to do with guns at all.

BECKEL: Somebody legally bought that gun --

PAVLICH: You don't know that.

BOLLING: Bob, you're saying they could have banned firearms completely?

BECKEL: No.

(CROSSTALK)

BECKEL: I'm saying --

BOLLING: If somebody could illegally buy a gun, eventually it's going to make its way to a criminal or a teen who was not allowed to own one.

BECKEL: There's two crises I'd like to see, before we go to saying that handgun, which is possible that handgun --

BOLLING: So, what's your point then?

BECKEL: Well, my point is there is a huge loophole with these shows --

PAVLICH: Yes, they bought it at a gun show.

BECKEL: -- where in Virginia and North Carolina and South Carolina, you can go in and buy up to seven guns without background checks. A lot of the crimes in Washington, D.C. emanate from those Virginia gun shows.

GUTFELD: They originate from lax sentencing laws. When you were caught with an illegal gun, you don't spend that much time in jail. If there was real punishment, they would probably stay -- there'd be less gun crime because they would be enforcing national laws.

BOLLING: I'll say it again, there's no -- we said it yesterday. It doesn't matter what the gun laws are anywhere, those kids were not allowed to have the gun that killed Chris Lane.

BECKEL: They got it from places where it usually --

BOLLING: It doesn't matter where they get it from, Bob, you could have hit them with a sledgehammer at this point.

PAVLICH: I had a firearm at the age of 11 to go hunting with my father and never used it in the way that these children used it. And that's because I had not a broken home, I was raised properly, I was taught how you respect firearm and it was purchase legally and I didn't break the law.

So, I don't think it's fair to say that, you know, just because you're a law abiding gun owner, somehow, these guys are going to end up in the wrong hands.

BECKEL: I didn't suggest that. I didn't suggest that.

GUTFELD: Go ahead.

PERINO: I was going to say outside of the gun argument, I do think another interesting aspect in development in all of these cases has been the social media component, and how one, these kids in some ways are the evidence against themselves because they were tweeting and bragging about it. But also, if you have a rural community outside of Oklahoma City, it is easier to find out what is going on with the Crips and the Bloods and the rappers and all those, because one of the kids tweeted this could help his rap career. OK, as they're trying to grow up in a transitioning America, they are actually -- social media become -- can become your own worst enemy.

BOLLING: Can I make one quick point and we got to go, Greg? Can you imagine if it was reversed? Two white guys kill a black kid, and they find this social stuff, I hate white, black people are angry, #hatethem? The left would be all over it. The media would just -- would be the next Trayvon Martin media --

BECKEL: The conservatives are all over this, aren't they?

GUTFELD: I think the point Eric is making, race would become a factor immediately in the reverse, whereas people are very, very shy talking about race suspects. For example, last week, two gay men were attacked in Chelsea by a group of thugs. They were shouting anti-gay slurs.

Christine Quinn, the mayoral candidate, says you have to find these guys. No description of what they looked like, none of the newspapers. No descriptions.

Immediately in your head, you're going why aren't they publishing descriptions? Because they don't want to because it's political incorrect to do that.

We are paralyzed by that. We can't say because somebody is afraid of looking like a bigot, I think that is where we're at, right?

BECKEL: Are you asking me that? I thought you were going to --

GUTFELD: I will now.

BECKEL: I think it is absolutely ridiculous that you can't describe who a perpetrator is.

GUTFELD: Yes.

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