Charlie Kirk an American right-wing political activist, author, and media personality was assassinated by a single shot in an apparent targeted attack during an outdoor event Wednesday at Utah Valley University. Kirk 31 co-founded the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA and was a close ally of President Donald Trump and was widely credited for helping galvanise support for the Republican Party and Trump’s Make America Great Again movement among American youth, including through regular engagements with university students.
The scourge of gun violence in America is out of control and must end. The shooting of Kirk is the latest incident of this chaos. The motivation of the man who shot Kirk isn't clear. What is clear is it was another example of American gun violence.
Charlie Kirk was speaking at a debate hosted by Turning Point USA (TPUSA).The event at UVU had been met with divided opinions on campus. An online petition calling for university administrators to bar Charlie Kirk from appearing received nearly 1,000 signatures. The university issued a statement last week citing First Amendment rights and affirming its “commitment to free speech, intellectual inquiry, and constructive dialogue.”
Videos posted to social media from Utah Valley University show Kirk speaking into a handheld microphone while sitting under a white tent emblazoned with the slogans “The American Comeback” and “Prove Me Wrong.” A single shot rings out and Kirk can be seen reaching up with his right hand as a large volume of blood gushes from the left side of his neck. Stunned spectators are heard gasping and screaming before people start to run away. The Associated Press was able to confirm the videos were taken at Sorensen Center courtyard on the Utah Valley University campus.
Immediately before the shooting, Charlie Kirk was taking questions from an audience member about mass shootings and gun violence. “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” the person asked. Charlie Kirk responded, “Too many.”
The questioner followed up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?” “Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk asked.
Then a single shot rang out. The shooter, who in a state with the death penalty, wore dark clothing and fired from a building roof some distance away to the courtyard where the event took place.
FBI special agent in charge Robert Bohls described the investigation as "in its early stages" and encouraged members of the public to come forward with information.
Following the shooting before Kirk was pronounced dead, President Trump called for prayers for Kirk on Truth Social. Several prominent political figures from both parties echoed the sentiment while condemning the act of political violence, as well as a number of international heads of state. Tributes to Kirk also came from celebrities, influencers, and athletes across the political aisle. Trump issued an order for all US flags to be flown at half-mast throughout the United States in his honor until September 14 at 6:00 p.m in an extraordinary display of mourning for someone who had no record of public service, but rather had devoted himself to the most repulsive forms of hate-mongering and racism. Kirk is certainly the first full-blown fascist to receive such an honor.
Charles James Kirk grew up in Chicago and attended a community college there before dropping out to pursue political activism and rise to prominence as a far right activist. He was persuasive, provocative and widely followed, with his social media reach well into the millions. He was also a genocide apologist, anti immigrants, anti abortion, anti women’s rights, anti anything human rights, very racist and islamophobic who defended every massacre in Gaza and used every platform available to justify Israel’s starvation campaign.
He also advocated for violence against marginalized people for the advancement of white evangelical Christianity and white supremacy .Charlie Kirk was also a firm supporter of the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, which grants Americans the right to bear arms. In an interview this year, he said that “it’s worth it” to have “some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment”. At end of the day he was a victim of his own advocacy against gun control. I don’t condone violence but Karma is such a bitch. Charlie Kirk also said to a Palestinian recently that there’s no such thing as Palestinians. Well now there’s no longer such a thing called Charlie Kirk.
We are supposed to mourn a dead father and say nice things about him, otherwise you're a terrible person. Also, we are supposed to not give a fuck about his passing, otherwise you're mourning a fascist. However you react, you will make someone mad. The thing is, it's okay to feel sad that Charlie Kirk is dead, even though he was a terrible person, and it's okay to joke about him being dead, even though he was a family man. It's okay to feel mixed emotions because we're humans and so much about us is contradictory.
While I feel a tinge of sadness that a fellow human being has lost his life in such awful circumstances, this does not mean I will be shedding tears for him. Charlie Kirk does not deserve my tears. Kirk himself saw empathy as a weakness and joked about the attack on Paul Pelosi. He frequently denied there was starvation in Gaza and excused Israel's genocidal practices. He was a forced birther who said he would make his ten-year-old daughter carry a baby to term if she were raped.
He was a horrendous racist who argued that black women were too stupid to be taken seriously. He called George Floyd a "scumbag" and said black people were better off in slavery. He dismissed Juneteenth as “anti-American,” sneered at diversity as “anti-White,” and told crowds Martin Luther King Jr. was “awful.”
Now his followers compare him to MLK. The irony would be laughable if it weren’t so grotesque: the man who tried to dismantle King’s legacy now rebranded as his heir. A man who sowed suspicion and cruelty was elevated as though he stood for justice and love. At one event, he kept referring to an Asian woman as "chink". He blamed transgender people for gun violence and called for the stoning of gay people. I could go on and on, but needless to say ,Charlie Kirk was a person who stoked division and incited violence.
I do not celebrate his death in anyway, and my compassion for humanity remains. I will feel sad for Charlie Kirk's children, however, who clearly had no say in who their dad was. and who will have to live with the trauma for the rest of their lives. But I won't shed a tear for someone so filled with hate, racism, misogyny and homophobia.
Charlie Kirk wasn’t a voice — he was a symbol of hate. So will not not mourn his death and participate in moments of silence for him. Mourning is reserved for those who loved, who healed, who tried to make the world softer. He did the opposite.
Yes, he went to colleges and called it ‘debate.’ But debate requires openness, a willingness to listen, to be changed by what you hear. That was never his aim. He didn’t come to learn, he came to evangelise, to belittle, to perform. It was never about dialogue. It was about domination.
Am so tired of people trying to win the morality olympics when it comes to Charlie kirk he was a literal nazi. I do not feel any empathy for nazis. Sadly we live in a time where if Adolf Hitler was alive today and was assassinated some people would say we should be paying respect to him and shedding tears. People trying to tell me to feel empathy for Charlie Kirk is like asking me to feel empathy for Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Augusto Pinochet, Oliveira Salazar or Netanyahu , it's not and will never going to happen.
I will today save my empathy and tears for the kids in Gaza who are dying everyday and the children who were and are being killed in school shootings. I hold no sympathy for a racist nazi like Charlie Kirk.
So what is Charlie Kirks real legacy? A generation taught to sneer at compassion. A movement convinced that cruelty is strength. A politics where every tragedy is just another weapon to swing. And now, in his absence, his followers call for dictatorship, brand the left ‘evil,’ fantasise about civil war, and openly call for the eradication of their political opponents. That sums up what he truly built. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Charlie Kirk’s life - and death - can remind us of the alternative: that love and empathy are not weaknesses but the only path that builds anything worth keeping. That we can live alongside people we disagree with without forcing them into our image. That dignity, kindness, and freedom mean respecting others’ choices, not policing them.
If there is any lesson here, it is that cruelty dies with the man who carried it, but love endures. That is the only legacy worth fighting for.
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