Why the Charlie Kirk killing asks huge questions about modern politics
The far right, pro-gun influencer was shot and killed at a campus event in Utah.
The killing of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy. The death of any person who does not constitute an immediate and present danger to the life of others is a tragedy, and even that can be debated.
It is a tragedy, just like the deaths of Melissa and Mark Hortman; the arson attack on Josh Shapiro’s house; the 9,474 direct threats and concerning statements made to members of Congress in 2024; Nancy Pelosi’s husband being bludgeoned with a hammer; Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, who were hospitalised after being shot; Gabrielle Giffords’ assassination attempt; Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg’s assassination attempt; and all the children killed daily in the United States from school shooters.
Questions of irony will rise to the surface from those on the left who are too insensitive to wade cautiously through the thoughts and prayers that swamped the public discourse from those who liked, appreciated, and even revered Charlie Kirk’s violent rhetoric. The lack of sensitivity towards a man who was so close to Trump, who rallied around traditional gender roles, who believed guns deaths were “unfortunate,” is not an advocacy of violence, but merely an acceptance of the world Kirk wanted: a free world, one might say.
One of those people includes Donald Trump, who has arguably single-handedly pushed world politics into a new era of unconscionable violence and immunity that would have been simply unthinkable even just 10 years ago. His push to storm the Capitol is seen by many as the watershed moment which saw the public copy their leader in turning the feckless into the fatal when it comes to politics.
Charlie Kirk should not have been killed. But peddling the benefits of carrying machine rifles on your person is not something that, clearly after the events of today, has any real benefit in society. Voting for guns is not a vote for safety.
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“I think it’s worth to have a cost of unfortunately some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the 2nd Amendment. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe,” Kirk said in 2023. Today’s horrors show that this is not the way.
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