But gun violence is so omnipresent in the United States that a cursory look at some of the 4200+ articles on this blog obviously include commentary on it, particularly when it comes to its aftermath in regard to famous figures. And so I'm breaking that rule to talk about the shocking death today of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated earlier today at Utah Valley University.
When discussing the dead, I think it's worth noting here that I have a pretty strict aversion to the adage "don't speak ill of the dead." While I, given how often we talk about movies on this blog, am fine separating the artist from the art (we can talk about the films of everyone from Roman Polanski to Mel Gibson to DW Griffith on this blog without needing to constantly clarify that we're talking about their movies, rather than their real-life behavior), politicians are not artists. They leave behind their voting records and the views they espoused, and that's it. Charlie Kirk, I'm going to be honest, was not a good person. His views on his social media posts & videos were racist, xenophobic, bigoted, and antisemitic. He regularly said defamatory things about Jews, African-Americans, and LGBTQ+ communities, and promoted false conspiracy theories to his followers.
He also was outspoken about gun violence, frequently viewing it as inevitable. A quote that circulated from 2023 in the wake of his death read (in the aftermath of a school shooting in Nashville), in regard to the Second Amendment: "I think it's worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational." Kirk was, in fact, talking about conspiracy theories regarding transgender people in association with gun violence literally seconds before he died. His last words were a retort to someone correcting him about how many mass shooters in the last 10 years were transgendered Americans.
I point this out because this is the body of Charlie Kirk's life, at this point his only tangible legacy. I also point it out because I disagree with Charlie Kirk, and do not think what happened today is rational or prudent-it is instead sad and horrifying. No person in America should be the victim of gun violence, full stop, no if's, and's, or but's. There is no joy or hubris in this moment, only sadness, another young man who died on the other side of a bullet, a far, far, far too common story in a country where gun violence is so common that there was literally another shooting in Colorado earlier today at a high school. Today is very sad, just like all acts of gun violence are sad, and I want to be clear that that's not something I'm going to debate (and any comments who say otherwise will be deleted).
I think it's worth noting that Democratic elected officials agree with me. Condemnations from across the Democratic Party, from figures as diverse as Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar & Nancy Pelosi swiftly condemned the shooter in Utah. While I am confident you can find jokes and memes that court the line (or cross it) into bad taste or hubris online, I am not a madman who thinks that Democrats are accountable for every single liberal on the internet, and I can find no Democratic public official or prominent activist who did anything other than uniformly condemn this, call for action to stop gun violence, and/or offer their sympathies to Kirk's family.
I would be derelict if I did not point out that Republicans have not offered the same courtesy when Democrats have been the victims of political violence. When House Speaker Melissa Hortman was killed earlier this year, Sen. Mike Lee went to Twitter and mocked the assassination, posting memes about Tim Walz, a close friend of Hortman's. Rep. Derrick van Orden, former Gov. Scott Walker, Elon Musk & Laura Loomer, both prominent members of Trump's inner circle (at least at the time), promoted conspiracy theories about the assassin, and Trump himself refused to speak to Gov. Walz in the wake of the killings (he also did not attend any of the services, which I noted at the time felt the wrong message to send to the nation-I believe fully that President Reagan or either President Bush would've made a point of going to the funeral as a sign of nationwide unity had this happened under their presidencies). When former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul was the victim of an attempted assassination, Republicans found it a time for mockery rather than a moment to condemn the violence. Donald Trump, Jr. posted a meme alluding to how he wanted to dress as the assailant for Halloween, and Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) claimed (baselessly, and eventually incorrectly) that the assailant was a "male nudist hippie prostitute." President Trump made jokes about Pelosi's attacks at a state party convention, and, yes, Charlie Kirk also mocked Pelosi, saying "some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail [the attacker] out."
These are not random, gadfly members of the Republican Party. They are regular, well-known ambassadors of the party at conventions & on major news networks, some of them even sitting elected officials, who have normalized mockery of violence against the Democratic Party, something that categorically is not true of the Democratic Party. For all of the "calmer heads need to prevail" talk, there is no major Democratic official who has mocked some of the political violence that Republicans like Kirk, President Trump, and Steve Scalise have endured in recent years. This is not a both sides issue, and bizarrely the Republicans aren't framing it that way. In the wake of Kirk's death, Republicans blamed the left for this despite the left universally condemning this type of behavior. Utah Republican Party Chairman Robert Axson stated "Schools and social media have become breeding grounds for liberal hate. Enough!" while Katie Miller (wife of White House advisor Stephen Miller) said that liberals "have blood on your hands." Elon Musk said "the left is the party of murder" while Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) yelled on the floor of Congress "y'all caused this."
It's worth noting that Kirk's assassin has not been caught, though I have confidence they will be (there's no universe where a crowd of hundreds, all carrying around cell phones, didn't get the person's face on camera). But it should also be noted that if you look at the history of political assassination in America, assuming that the person's politics are the reason for their crime is not necessarily true. In the cases of figures like Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray, there was a clear political motivation associated with the men they shot. However, Arthur Bremer & John Hinckley did it in an attempt at fame, while others like Squeaky Fromme & Sarah Jane Moore's motives didn't feel directly connected to President Ford (whom both of them attempted to assassinate in 1975), but rather unrelated political activism. With other figures like Thomas Matthew Crooks & Lee Harvey Oswald, there was no clear indication as to why they shot the president. This is all to say that any assumptions about the assassin's political beliefs are premature and dangerous-we don't know what we don't know. They're also not important in the grand scheme of things-the person is a criminal and should be brought to justice.
Charlie Kirk's death today is yet another in a (far, far) too long list of incidents involving gun deaths in the 21st Century in the United States, and a disturbing recent trend of violence in the United States against public figures. We need to come together and find a way to end it through legislation, and by setting an example collectively that this is wrong, and will not be tolerated toward anyone, regardless of their political beliefs. The Democrats are doing that. If the Republicans are serious about this, they will condemn the statements by people like Axson, Musk, & Miller, and call for a new conversation. Anything otherwise feels hollow as citizens are forced to process yet another tragedy.
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