This article discusses gun violence and mass shootings and may be distressing for some readers.
When gun violence claims lives on the left and the right, the real enemy is those who refuse gun reform.
On Sept. 10, prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while leading a rally at Utah Valley University. And while no one deserves to be a victim of political violence, blaming Kirk’s death on the “radical left” overshadows the real lesson of the assassination, that the United States needs to get serious about gun reform.
Kirk was a passionate advocate for the Second Amendment right to bear arms, stating that gun deaths are the “unfortunate cost” of protecting the right. The irony of statements like these shouldn’t be lost in the discourse surrounding Kirk’s death. It’s important to recognize that while Kirk’s death was a tragedy, he helped foster the environment that ultimately killed him.
There’s a clear double standard for victims of gun violence in the United States, where right-wing political advocates are lost heroes, and Democrats are an unfortunate consequence of the Second Amendment. On June 14, the Democratic state representative Melissa Hortman was shot and killed in her Minneapolis home. Other victims of the politically motivated attacks were her husband, Mark Hortman, and democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.
Following Kirk’s assassination, Trump immediately issued an order to lower American flags to
half-mast at all public buildings and announced he would award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honour.
As well as praising Kirk, Trump has used the assassination to foster division between the right and the left, framing the event as a national tragedy and a rallying cry for the right.
Trump offered an impersonal condemnation of Hortman’s killing on social media and deigned to attend the funeral. Trump’s inability to remain bipartisan after a fatal shooting is shocking and disappointing.
Trump painted Kirk’s assassination as a violent attack on the right before he even knew the suspected killer’s political affiliations. Trump’s statements blatantly ignore patterns of right-wing militancy, including the Minnesota shootings and the January 6 insurrection, which he encouraged via social media.
The right-wing response to Kirk’s assassination put him on a pedestal as a political figure, when he was no more than a commentator at best. Kirk’s content was more focused on creating controversy than meaningfully contributing to the field of politics, exclusively catering to an online audience, and wasn’t taken seriously by politicians or academics, besides Donald Trump, who praised his polarizing remarks.
Memorials comparing Kirk to influential political figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. are insulting, especially because Kirk was vocally opposed to the Civil Rights Act. He was also vocally opposed to the right to live freely for a variety of groups, including immigrants, women, and members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. Kirk didn’t deserve to be assassinated, but he shouldn’t be remembered as a hero.
It’s a tragedy that Kirk will be leaving his wife and two children without a husband or father. However, the same is true for the thousands of victims of gun violence across the United States.
Instead of vilifying the left and turning an already polarized country against each other, responses to Kirk’s assassination should center on the topic of gun control. Political commentary and social media followings aside, the reality is that Kirk’s death is just another number in the growing firearm death toll across the country.
Until the United States treats gun control with the urgency it deserves, cases like these will remain not exceptional, but inevitable.
Tags
Charlie Kirk, Gun Violence, Trump, United States
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