“I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the 2nd Amendment,” conservative activist Charlie Kirk once said at a convention in 2023.
Two years later, Kirk is dead. Shot while speaking at Utah Valley University by the same guns he advocated for.
This was undoubtedly a targeted political act, one done in broad daylight. The shooter supposedly aimed from a roof 200 yards away, killing Kirk in a single shot before escaping the scene of the crime.
The shooting happened right after a student asked, “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” Kirk responded, “Too many.”
The amount of political violence we’ve seen in the last year is unprecedented, from two attempted Trump assassinations, the shooting of democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, and hate crimes against Jewish leaders, including a couple being shot at the Israeli embassy, and Democratic governor Josh Shapiro’s house being set on fire on the first night of Passover.
Charlie Kirk recently featured in a video for the YouTube channel Jubilee, where he debated college students with a noticeable power difference. His four claims were: abortion is murder and should be illegal, college is a scam, trans women are not women, and Kamala Harris is a DEI candidate. It was hard to watch as he drove one student to tears, talking very fast and repeatedly stating her transgender friend was not a woman like her.
Last year, Turning Point USA hosted a ‘Real Women’s Day’ here on Sonoma State’s campus that was intentionally targeted against trans women. They arrived with armed security personnel and attempted to provoke a response out of students. The event was met with peaceful protests, and the group left campus without incident. Still, the presence of the movement on campus caused many students from minority groups to feel unsafe.
Yet despite his movement intentionally trying to harm vulnerable students, we are still extremely appalled at this shooting. Seeing the horror on the faces of people in the crowd, and the fear is has caused, not to mention the grief it must have caused his family, it is clear that nothing good will come out of this.
“I think empathy is a made-up New Age term that does a lot of damage,” said Kirk on the Oct. 12, 2022 episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show”.
We disagree. Empathy is what we need right now.
The amount of violence happening on all sides of the political spectrum is unprecedented. All over social media right now, people are upset, furious, or outraged at each other for daring to tie a political message to the shooting. The college demographic Kirk aimed for is torn over a new question: even if someone is advocating for things that harm people, what message does shooting them in broad daylight send?
People on both sides of the political spectrum are afraid. And the lack of empathy we show to one another is why these events have been happening so frequently. It is important to find mutual ground with people we disagree with if we want to make up for the extreme political divide – and I can see that people on the right are afraid of violence just like we are.
Rylan Valdepena, the STAR’s managing editor, writes: “I’m deeply sorry to Kirk’s family, friends, and anyone who was affected by this event. As a left-wing transgender person who was personally hurt by the actions of Turning Point USA here at Sonoma State, I want to say that violence is not the answer. We don’t want you to feel pain, or go through something horrible like this, even if you have hurt us.”
Even if you disagree with someone on a lot of issues – silencing them through an act like this shows cowardice and hatred. No matter which side it is coming from, and there has been a lot from both recently, political violence solves nothing and is against the very idea of democracy.
Shooting a man in front of thousands of people will not make anyone understand anything. Empathy – even if Kirk himself denounced it – will.
Edit: On September 20th, this article was edited to remove a bit of misinformation that Kirk’s family was attending the event, and sections with individual opinions were given attribution.
