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school shootings
On Charlie Kirk, Public Grieving, and Violence
The country is turning him into a symbol, even as his legacy fuels harm, fear, and loss for families who will never be mourned this loudly.
Sep 12, 2025
I want to be clear: I don’t condone killing of any kind. That’s not who I am, and that’s not what I believe.
This post is also not about advocating for or against gun laws (although we know that the majority of Americans do agree with common-sense laws). This is about societal attention and whose lives are mourned publicly, and how certain narratives and policies shape who we grieve and why.
I am struck by how many people on my feed are publicly grieving Charlie Kirk. It feels dissonant. Let me explain why.
None of these same people posted about Minnesota House Member, Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, and her husband being murdered in their sleep. Nor did they post about Speaker John Hoffman and his wife being shot in their sleep by the same shooter (they did survive).
None posted about the 48 school shootings that have occurred already in 2025, leaving 19 dead and 81 injured (including one just hours after Kirk was shot, where two more children are critically injured, and at least four more injured in the Colorado school shooting).
None posted about the 50,000+ Palestinian children killed or injured in what can only be described as genocide.
None posted about the 688 women in the US who died in childbirth in 2024, or the 49,000 who almost did. Primarily women of color of course.
None posted about the 14 people who have died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody so far this year.
I could go on and on with these examples.
He spent his career normalizing deadly ideas (from gun culture to dehumanization), and in the end, he was consumed by the same violence he helped spread.
Here’s the dissonance: Charlie Kirk actively contributed to the narratives and policies that fueled this violence. He supported policies that tore children from their parents’ arms, while claiming to be a family man. He spread racist, homophobic, transphobic, antisemitic, and Islamophobic ideology while claiming to be a Christian. He near shouted misogynistic ideals while being married to a woman. Through Turning Point USA, he built a media machine that thrived on outrage, disinformation, and deepening division.
He once said, “I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that—it does a lot of damage.” If you don’t believe in empathy, it makes it much easier to oppress others and create division. It makes it much easier to push a narrative without regard for the consequences of that narrative.
He spent his career normalizing deadly ideas (from gun culture to dehumanization), and in the end, he was consumed by the same violence he helped spread.
Charlie Kirk didn’t physically commit violence himself, though he profited from fear, division, and policies that harmed and continue to harm marginalized people, thus perpetuating the violence. His influence amplified oppression, and that influence brought him financial gain, visibility, and political power.
It is, of course, deeply sad for his children. No child should have to lose a parent like this.
That being said, the way his death is being framed publicly goes beyond grief. It edges into martyrdom. This is turning him into a symbol, even as his legacy fuels harm, fear, and loss for families who will never be mourned this loudly.
We should grieve children, families, and communities first. Not the people who profited from their suffering.
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How the Corrupt Supreme Court Helped Create the US Gun Violence Crisis
Melissa Hortman was a strong advocate of gun control laws. Charlie Kirk opposed them. Both are dead by gunfire, along with hundreds of children and adults so far this year.
Sep 12, 2025
“I think it’s worth 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.”—Charlie Kirk
Republican Charlie Kirk is dead. So is former Democratic Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark.
Two clearly political assassinations in the past four months.
And a new study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association’s journal Pediatrics suggests that most of the deaths from the more than 250 mass shootings in America so far this year could also be classified as resulting from politics.
How did we get here, and what do we do?
In 2008, the in-the-National Rifle Association’s (NRA)-pocket Republican Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia did much the same thing that Sam Alito would later do with his Dobbs anti-abortion ruling: He reached back hundreds of years to look for a definition at the time the Second Amendment was written for how people then viewed the phrase “bear arms” and then twisted it beyond recognition.
The result was the corrupt Heller decision, as I lay out in The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment, which unleashed a new wave of guns on an unsuspecting America.
It was followed two years later by McDonald v Chicago, another NRA-purchased, all-Republican decision striking down Chicago’s gun control laws and forcing cities and blue states to accept more weapons whether their people—through their elected officials—wanted that tsunami of guns in their communities or not.
As Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his dissent in McDonald:
Although the Court’s decision in this case might be seen as a mere adjunct to its decision in Heller, the consequences could prove far more destructive—quite literally—to our Nation’s communities and to our constitutional structure.
As we saw Wednesday with the right’s new martyr, and have been seeing in the daily toll of gun deaths that America—alone among all other nations in the world—suffers from, Stevens was prescient.
We are literally the only country in the world that is experiencing this magnitude of gun crisis. Half of the guns in civilian hands in the entire world are here in the United States, so it shouldn’t surprise anybody that the leading cause of childhood death in the US is bullets and political assassinations have become routine.
The study in Pediatrics looked at child gun deaths in America before and after the 2010 McDonald decision. What they found is shocking.
Hopefully the assassination of a far-right “gun rights” icon will cause at least a few Republicans to break with their party’s fealty to the weapons industry.
That decision caused two major changes in gun laws across America. The first was that nearly every red state loosened their gun laws, sometimes in the extreme, even allowing open carry of semiautomatic weapons of war without any permit or regulation. Most blue states, on the other hand, looked for and found ways around the decision to actually tighten their gun control laws.
The result was astonishing. Between 2011 and 2023, the study period, red states that had loosened their gun laws saw 7,453 more children killed by firearms than the pre-McDonald statistical trends would have predicted had the Republicans on the court not further loosened gun laws.
In blue states that maintained or strengthened their gun laws, though, child gun deaths remained the same as before McDonald and Heller, and, to quote the study:
“Four states (California, Maryland, New York, and Rhode Island) had decreased pediatric firearm mortality after McDonald v Chicago, all of which were in the strict firearms law group.” (emphasis added)
Melissa Hortman was a strong advocate of gun control laws. Charlie Kirk opposed them. Both are dead by gunfire, along with hundreds of children and adults so far this year.
When Hortman was murdered by a politically-inspired right-wing thug, some conservatives on X and other platforms celebrated.
Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, for example, tweeted, “This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way,” along with a picture of the shooter. An hour later, again showing the suspect’s picture, Sen. Lee wrote: “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” apparently trying to humorously reference Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and his advocacy for gun control.
Yesterday, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, some liberals were posting the equivalent of “good riddance” to social media platforms, some making Lee’s obscene posts seem tame.
Both are reprehensible.
Instead, let’s take this moment to reflect on how the NRA’s work over the past decades—often funded and supported by Vladimir Putin’s Russia (where gun control is rigid)—killed both of them. And tens of thousands of children and adults over the years.
This week NPR reported that school shootings have spawned a $4 billion industry selling everything from bulletproof backpacks to “panic buttons, bullet-resistant whiteboards, facial recognition technology, training simulators, body armor, guns, and tasers.” They note:
Tom McDermott, with the metal detector manufacturer CEIA USA, says schools used to be a small fraction of their US business. Now they’re the majority.
"It’s not right. We need to solve this problem. It’s good for business, but we don't need to be selling to schools," McDermott says.
Sarah McNeeley, a sales manager with SAM Medical, is selling trauma kits, which include tourniquets, clotting agents, and chest seals. She says their customers are traditionally EMTs, fire departments, and military medics, but increasingly, school districts.
It’s insane that America’s answer to five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court and the NRA flooding our country with deadly weapons is to create a multibillion-dollar industry to stop bullets or ameliorate their damage in our public schools.
The vast majority of Americans want rational gun control laws instead of this Wild West insanity. Every other developed country in the world has them; not a single one forces their children through the trauma of active shooter drills or subjects them to metal detectors and requires them to occasionally come face-to-face with murderous psychopaths armed to the teeth.
It’s way past time for our politicians to wake the hell up, and hopefully the assassination of a far-right “gun rights” icon will cause at least a few Republicans to break with their party’s fealty to the weapons industry and join with Democrats to Make America Safe Again.
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As Charlie Kirk Killed on Utah Campus, 3 Teens Hurt in Colorado High School Shooting
"What does it say about us that the news of a conservative political activist getting assassinated may need to compete for coverage with yet another school shooting?" said one podcaster.
Sep 10, 2025
As condemnation of the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk continued to pour in on Wednesday, details emerged about another shooting, at Evergreen High School in Colorado, that left at least three teenagers in critical condition.
"What does it say about us that the news of a conservative political activist getting assassinated may need to compete for coverage with yet another school shooting?" writer and podcaster Manny Fidel asked on social media.
Kirk, the 31-year-old CEO and co-founder of the right-wing youth organization Turning Point USA, was shot during an event at Utah Valley University. Kirk's spokesperson, Andrew Kolvet, and US President Donald Trump confirmed his death. There is no suspect in custody.
Footage shared on social media shows that just before Kirk was shot in the neck, a member of the crowd asked him, "Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?" Kirk responded, "Counting or not counting gang violence?"
March for Our Lives, which launched in the wake of the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was among the organizations and public figures who weighed in on Kirk's apparent assassination.
"Gun violence spares no one," the group said. "The shooting of Charlie Kirk makes clear that this crisis doesn't care about ideology or politics—it endangers us all. We know the solutions: stronger background checks, extreme risk protection orders, accountability for the gun industry, and more. What stands in the way is not a lack of answers, but political obstruction. Every day of inaction costs lives. It's long past time for leaders of every party to choose people over politics and act."
March for Our Lives also called out the Trump administration for various actions it has taken since the president returned to power:
Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts said, "The problem with allowing guns everywhere is that no one is safe anywhere."
Everytown for Gun Safety ranks Utah 36th in the country for "gun law strength." The Utah Valley University website says in part that it "complies with state law with regard to weapons" and "allows concealed firearm permit holders to possess their concealed firearm on campus."
Watts and March for Our Lives were among those who highlighted that the Kirk shooting coincided with the one in Colorado. The gun violence prevention organization said, "Another group of kids left to live with fear and trauma, because our so-called leaders would rather protect the gun lobby than protect the people they serve."
As The Denver Post reported on the shooting in Evergreen, Colorado:
Hundreds of police and law enforcement officers responded to the high school at 29300 Buffalo Park Road for an active shooting, which county officials first reported on social media at 12:40 pm.
Three people from the high school were being treated at CommonSpirit St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood on Wednesday afternoon and were in critical condition, spokesperson Lindsay Radford said.
The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office later confirmed on social media that "one of the three students transported is the suspect," and the school, which over 900 children attend, has been cleared by law enforcement.
Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said that "I am closely monitoring the situation at Evergreen High School, and am getting live updates. State troopers are supporting local law enforcement in responding to this situation. Students should be able to attend school safely and without fear across our state and nation. We are all praying for the victims and the entire community."
Polis separately addressed Kirk's shooting, saying that "political violence is never acceptable, and I condemn the brutal and inexcusable attack on Charlie Kirk in Utah. This is a challenging time for so many in our country, but any divisions we face will never be solved by trying to hurt each other. I am sending hope and love to his friends and his family in this dark hour. I encourage everyone to be stronger and disagree better and peacefully."
Like the governor, Fred Guttenberg, who became an activist against gun violence after his 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was murdered in Parkland, took note of both shootings. He declared that "it is time for Republicans and Democrats to find a way to work together to reduce gun violence."
Also acknowledging both shootings, Congresswoman Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said: "Gun violence and political violence cannot continue to devastate our communities. We need gun reform now."
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