Charlie Kirk's murder should be deplored, but the irony of his defense of guns is not lost

Social media blows up with Kirk quotes defending 'some gun deaths.' You can read the full context of what he said here.

The irony is not lost on anyone.

Charlie Kirk, a MAGA darling and outspoken gun-rights advocate, was about to address a question about mass shootings when he was fatally shot.

Social media instantly blew up with videos of the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA in which he argued that the senseless epidemic of gun violence in America is an acceptable price of liberty.

The video came from a 2023 question-and-answer session with students. He’d been asked how to respond to critics who “want to take our Second Amendment rights away.”

His reply:

“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.”

There is a larger context for those remarks. This was just one line in a lengthier response to the question, and I reprint the full text below.

But it encapsulates his philosophy about guns and his standard response to the questions he was frequently asked on college campuses about mass murders, like the massacre at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and the 49 people killed and 53 wounded at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando.

Kirk’s emotionally detached response was far too cavalier and disrespectful of victims and their loved ones. It was a shallow answer to a dreadful problem in our society.

And it is hardly the only deplorable stance Kirk had taken over the years. He called the Civil Rights Act a “huge mistake.” He compared vaccination requirements to apartheid. He supported the racist “great replacement conspiracy theory” that immigration is a plot to dilute the white population. He was dismissive of climate change, critical of gay rights, and so forth.

Trump was a fan. MAGA loved him. But even if you found his points of view vile, as I certainly did, that doesn’t mean he deserved to have his voice silenced by a bullet. He had a right to express his views, as do we all. It’s the cornerstone of democracy. And silencing political opposition with violence is unAmerican.

What people are saying:

Gabby Giffords, retired member of Congress and victim of a horrific assassination attempt: “Political violence has no place in our society. I say this as someone who knows the horrors of a targeted shooting firsthand.”

Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party: “I am deeply disturbed by the murder of Charlie Kirk. Violence has NO place in our politics, and the Florida Democratic Party condemns this despicable and heinous act in the strongest of terms. I will keep Charlie’s wife, Erika, and their young children in my prayers.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis: "I think we also have to reflect on the fact that the way to resolve political disputes is not through violence and we see increasing levels of political violence in this country."

Kirk’s full remarks from that 2023 video:

Kirk’s violent death should be deplored, just as we condemn the murders of so many other victims of gun violence in this country. Kirk had a right to share his opinions. But Kirk also believed, ironically, that gun violence was inevitable and an acceptable price to pay. Here’s the full exchange between Kirk and a student questioner in 2023:

AUDIENCE QUESTION: How's it going, Charlie? I'm Austin. I just had a question related to Second Amendment rights. We saw the shooting that happened recently, and a lot of people are upset. But, I'm seeing people argue for the other side that they want to take our Second Amendment rights away. How do we convince them that it's important to have the right to defend ourselves and all that good stuff?

CHARLIE KIRK: Yeah, it's a great question. Thank you. So, I'm a big Second Amendment fan but I think most politicians are cowards when it comes to defending why we have a Second Amendment. This is why I would not be a good politician, or maybe I would, I don't know, because I actually speak my mind.

The Second Amendment is not about hunting. I love hunting. The Second Amendment is not even about personal defense. That is important. The Second Amendment is there, God forbid, so that you can defend yourself against a tyrannical government. And if that talk scares you — "wow, that's radical, Charlie, I don't know about that" — well then, you have not really read any of the literature of our Founding Fathers. Number two, you've not read any 20th-century history. You're just living in Narnia. By the way, if you're actually living in Narnia, you would be wiser than wherever you're living, because C.S. Lewis was really smart. So I don't know what alternative universe you're living in. You just don't want to face reality that governments tend to get tyrannical and that if people need an ability to protect themselves and their communities and their families.

Now, we must also be real. We must be honest with the population. Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty. Driving comes with a price. 50,000, 50,000, 50,000 people die on the road every year. That's a price. You get rid of driving, you'd have 50,000 less auto fatalities. But we have decided that the benefit of driving — speed, accessibility, mobility, having products, services — is worth the cost of 50,000 people dying on the road. So we need to be very clear that you're not going to get gun deaths to zero. It will not happen. You could significantly reduce them through having more fathers in the home, by having more armed guards in front of schools. We should have a honest and clear reductionist view of gun violence, but we should not have a utopian one.

You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won't have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It's drivel. But I am, I, I — I think it's worth it. 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. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe.

So then, how do you reduce? Very simple. People say, oh, Charlie, how do you stop school shootings? I don't know. How did we stop shootings at baseball games? Because we have armed guards outside of baseball games. That's why. How did we stop all the shootings at airports? We have armed guards outside of airports. How do we stop all the shootings at banks? We have armed guards outside of banks. How did we stop all the shootings at gun shows? Notice there's not a lot of mass shootings at gun shows, there's all these guns. Because everyone's armed. If our money and our sporting events and our airplanes have armed guards, why don't our children?

A point of clarification

Just to keep the record straight, there are more gun deaths in America every year than traffic deaths, and Kirk’s comparing the two was a classic apples-and-oranges logical fallacy.

In 2023, the most recent year for side-by-side comparisons, there were 46,728 deaths by firearms while 40,990 people died in traffic accidents.

Americans have not been complacent about traffic fatalities as we all know when we are required by law to buckle up and we see the airbag indicators on our dashboards. Cars are regulated. One result of that regulation has been a steady decline in deaths since 1975 on a per capita basis.

Gun deaths are at a historically high level.

And while Americans need cars to get to work and the grocery store and school, they don’t NEED guns. In fact, polls show that a majority of Americans favor stricter gun control laws.

More irony

Virtually while Charlie Kirk was speaking yesterday, an appeals court overturned Florida’s ban on the open carrying of firearms.

The First District Court of Appeals in the Florida Panhandle ruled that the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms forbids any restrictions on walking around with pistols on our hips in Florida.

“The Constitution protects the right to carry arms openly for self-defense,” the three-judge panel ruled. “Florida’s Open Carry Ban cannot be reconciled with that guarantee.”

About the shooter

As this is written, the shooter has not been found. This despite FBI Director Kash Patel’s breathless announcement on Twitter (currently called X) last night claiming that the feds had captured Kirk’s killer.

“The subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody. Thank you to the local and state authorities in Utah for your partnership with @fbi,”

Turns out they got the wrong guy. The actual shooter was still at large. A manhunt is underway.

Flags at half-staff

Donald Trump announced that he will posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom and that flags should be flown at half-staff through the evening of Sept. 14 in his honor.

The cynic in me wondered why Kirk was getting a lowered flag and not all the other gun violence victims. But, in fairness, a little research shows that Trump has ordered the flag lowered on at least six previous occasions for mass murder victims during his two terms in office.

Of course, the fact that there have been six such occasions during his tenure speaks volumes about the gun violence problem this country has. And there could have been—and should have been—more lowered flags.

The Gun Violence Archive defines mass shootings as events in which four or more people are shot or killed. We average about two a day in the United States.

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J.C. Bruce, journalist and author, is the founder of Tropic Press. He holds dual citizenship in the United States of America and his native Florida. Share this email with your friends. They will love you for it.

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