Tragedy without surprise: Charlie Kirk’s killing and America’s habit of political violence

A tragic death, not a surprise

Charlie Kirk’s death is tragic. It is also predictable in a country that keeps pretending political violence is alien to our civic life. The shooting at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025, that took Kirk’s life is sickening and unacceptable. It is not shocking. The United States has never been insulated from bullets mixing with politics. That is our history and, unless we change course, our present.

Consider the record that polite statements keep trying to erase. Four presidents were assassinated while in office. Ronald Reagan survived an attempt that left him and others gravely wounded. Gerald Ford faced two attempts within 17 days in September 1975. This is not a rare aberration. It is a recurring feature.

What happened in Orem fits that reality rather than defying it. Authorities are still pursuing leads while national figures rush to frame the event to their advantage. The immediate impulse to turn a human loss into political theater is a separate disgrace, but it flows from the same culture that treats violence as a tool, a spectacle, and a bargaining chip.

Kirk himself often argued that a certain level of bloodshed was a “cost” worth paying to preserve expansive interpretations of the Second Amendment. In April 2023 he said, “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.” He also promoted the idea of public executions, speculating about making children watch them. These remarks do not justify his killing. They do help explain the country that produced it. When influential voices normalize cruelty and death as acceptable collateral, the boundary between rhetoric and action gets thinner.

Guns as identity, not public safety

Calling this moment unprecedented is a way to avoid responsibility. It is easier to recite clichés than to admit we have built a political ecosystem that incubates threats, valorizes intimidation, and treats guns as identity badges. After last year’s attempt on Donald Trump’s life, there was no comprehensive effort by his movement to embrace meaningful firearm restrictions or reduce access to tools of rapid mass harm. The cycle continued. The funerals continue. The shocked faces on television continue.

If we actually want fewer tragedies, we have to say plain things and then act like we mean them. Political murder is wrong. Violence as a political tactic is wrong. Celebrating or rationalizing it is wrong. That clarity must be paired with policy: universal background checks with real enforcement, extreme risk laws that are actually used, safe storage requirements, and limits on weapons designed to kill many people quickly. None of that erases constitutional rights. It acknowledges that rights come with responsibilities that protect other people’s lives.

Mourning without mythmaking

We should also stop glamorizing the language of retribution. Public talk about executions, vengeance, and enemies of the state is not entertainment. It is an accelerant. The longer we tolerate it, the more we will be forced to pretend the next act of violence was unimaginable, when it was merely unprevented.

Mourn Charlie Kirk. Refuse to celebrate his death. Refuse to be surprised by it. Surprise would require amnesia, and we have already tried that for more than two centuries. What we have not tried with any consistency is a civic culture that stigmatizes violent rhetoric, a media environment that denies it oxygen, and a legal framework that treats easy access to firearms as a solvable public safety problem. That would be new. That would be patriotic in practice rather than in slogan.

If we want a different country, we will have to build one. Ending the violence starts with telling the truth about who we are and choosing to become something else.

References

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/charlie-kirk-shot-utah-turning-point-usa
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-leaders-who-were-killed-or-survived-assassination-attempts-2024-07-14
https://abcnews.go.com/US/charlie-kirk-shooting-fbi-appeals-tips-manhunt-continues/story?id=125469211
https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-says-gun-deaths-worth-it-2nd-amendment-1793113