September 11, 2025 12:08 PM UTC

Charlie Kirk Was Right About This

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• by: Colorado Pols

In the aftermath of Wednesday’s killing of right-wing media figure Charlie Kirk during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, there has been an endless stream of irresponsible chatter online (and at Fox News) about “political violence” and the United States reaching a “turning point” on the issue — including some disturbing suggestions about “retribution” from those on the political right.

We agree that Wednesday’s shooting should be a turning point…but for a different reason.

Much of the talk since Kirk’s death has centered around Republicans being the true victims here — which for State Rep. Brandi Bradley (R-Littleton) strangely ignores her gross response in June after former Minnesota State House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark were killed by a gunman who came to their door (State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were wounded in a related attack). Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee also responded to the Kirk killing much differently than he did back in June, when he promoted weird conspiracy theories about the Minnesota shootings. In a video message from the White House on Wednesday, President Trump blamed the “radical left” for Kirk’s death and unironically bemoaned the “demonizing” of political opponents in the United States.

But let’s put those incongruent responses aside and focus on what these horrific examples of political violence (and Wednesday’s school shooting at Evergreen High School) have in common: Guns.

Kirk made an unfortunate statement back in April 2023 in which he argued that gun deaths were the price Americans had to pay in order to support the Second Amendment and the ability of every citizen to own more guns than pairs of pants:

KIRK: “Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty…

“…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 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.” [Pols emphasis]

We don’t mention this quote in order to mock Kirk. In fact, Kirk was not wrong in his logic — and that’s the point we’re trying to make here.

Roughly four in ten U.S. adults live in a household where a firearm is present. Americans make up about 4% of the entire global population, but collectively we own nearly half of all guns known to be in existence. It has often been said — accurately — that no other country on earth has the same problem with gun violence as the United States. The reason isn’t because other countries do a better job of policing; it’s common sense that there are far fewer gun deaths in places where there are far fewer guns.

To use an example, people are regularly killed or injured in rickshaw accidents in India at a significantly higher rate than in the United States. That’s not because we have better rickshaw drivers in America (or maybe we do; who knows?), but because rickshaws are exponentially less common here than they are in India.

Gun laws in Utah are among the most relaxed in the country; there is no requirement for a permit or a background check in order to carry a gun openly in Utah. Earlier this year, Utah lawmakers relaxed gun laws on college campuses even further. Authorities are still searching for the gunman who shot and killed Kirk, but they have recovered a bolt-action high-powered rifle that appears to have been used to make the fateful shot from several buildings away. Had anyone spotted a person carrying such a weapon around the Utah Valley University campus, there’s not much authorities could have done about it. That’s crazy. Full stop.

There is plenty of evidence that political violence is rising in America, and we definitely don’t discount that concern. But focusing on political violence ignores the much more obvious problem here. Sure, Kirk could have been killed by an assailant wielding a knife (or a hammer, an example that Rep. Lauren Boebert laughably trots out on occasion). Kirk could have also been killed by a falling meteor, for that matter. But he wasn’t; Kirk is dead today because it’s really, really easy in many places in America to own and operate a high-powered rifle.

As The Washington Post reported on Wednesday afternoon before news had broken of Kirk’s death, the true problem is easy to spot:

Gun safety advocates decried the shooting of Charlie Kirk and called for conservatives to join their efforts to prevent gun violence.

Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona), who was shot and severely wounded at a constituent event near Tucson in 2011, said she and her husband, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona), were praying for Kirk’s recovery.

“I’m horrified to hear that Charlie Kirk was shot at an event in Utah. Democratic societies will always have political disagreements, but we must never allow America to become a country that confronts those disagreements with violence,” Giffords, who co-founded an eponymous gun safety group after she was injured, wrote on X.

Fred Guttenberg, an activist whose daughter was killed in the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, called the news “horrible.”

“Truly hope he is ok. My fight to reduce gun violence is to benefit all of us and our rights to be free from gun violence. I would love to hear from others on the right who understand this and agree. Let’s work together,” Guttenberg wrote on X.

The nonprofit group Brady: United Against Gun Violence also denounced political violence and called for “a united response to America’s gun violence crisis.”

Yes, we need to address the scourge of political violence in this country, though that won’t happen until people stop pretending that it’s only the other side that is responsible for the increase in attacks. But the biggest problem with violence in the United States is that it is far too easy for someone to get their hands on a gun.

Charlie Kirk was right: If Americans want to continue to have such ridiculously-open access to murderous weapons out of some weird obsession with the Second Amendment, then they absolutely must accept the devastating impact of gun violence. 

Quite simply, this is not a trade that most people should be willing to make. Let’s hope that more politicians can come to the same conclusion.

Guns are the problem. Guns have always been the problem. Until we fix that problem, nothing is going to change.