It’s Gun Violence

I do not condone gun violence. I condemn the assassination of Charlie Kirk. My condolences go out to his family.

Nevertheless, let’s not forget that Kirk was a right-wing provocateur who built his fame and fortune on abomination, disinformation, polarization, and radicalization. Kirk knew damn well what he got into when he boasted, “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.”

America has a dead-serious gun problem and Kirk’s violent rhetoric only makes it worse. He normalized gun violence. He was a great political performer. He rose to the occasion and seized the moment. He was unstoppable until a bullet caught up to him.

Again, Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be shot and killed, but let’s not forget there was another school shooting on the same day at Evergreen High School in Evergreen, Colorado. Kirk’s death is heinous, but the lives of so many innocent children we lost to mass shootings are also tragic.

At this point, we still don’t know the motive behind Kirk’s assassination, but what we do know is that gun violence is neither a left nor a right problem. Gun violence is an American problem.