Do not let people tell you that these are your only choices. Because it’s just not true. No, Charlie Kirk was not a good person. And no, I don’t think he deserved to die.
You’ve almost certainly heard by now: Charlie Kirk was shot and killed yesterday. He was shot while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University. Utah—coincidentally—is one of two states (along with West Virginia) that passed a “Campus Carry” law (2025’s Utah HB128) REQUIRING colleges to allow students to carry firearms while on campus and restricting colleges from putting policies in place that prohibit both open and concealed carry while at school. I heard about the shooting later in the day, and since then, I’ve spent many hours reading people’s thoughts on social media. The reactions are far-ranging: From painting him as some sort of hero or even a “martyr,” all the way to sarcastic calls for “Thoughts & Prayers.” Me? I’m not sure how to feel. I mostly feel sick to my stomach. But what I DON’T see is “celebration.” What I saw is nearly universal condemnation of this act of violence from leaders who opposed Charlie Kirk’s hateful ideology:
This is the furthest thing from celebration. This overwhelming condemnation. MOST of what I see is summed up in this Bluesky post:
I’d add to that a general category of “Pointing Out Hypocrisies and Inconsistencies” in the criticisms of peoples’ reactions—ESPECIALLY when using Charlie Kirk’s own words. Listen—if someone dies from a head injury sustained in a motorcycle accident, and then it turns out that same person spent their life calling motorcycle helmet laws “tyranny” and even had a popular podcast where they encourage people to fight against those tyrannical helmet laws… pointing out that fact is not “dancing on their grave.” If you claim to be the party of “Law & Order” but then you hand out presidential pardons to every January 6 insurrectionist who violently attacked police officers, drawing attention to that inconsistency is not an act of hatred. When talking about the three 9-year-old kids and three adults were killed by a shooter at The Covenant School here in Nashville, Charlie Kirk heartlessly said the following: “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.” He said, “We cannot allow them to emotionally hijack the narrative.” So when someone post his words next to the news that he was killed by gun violence, it’s not celebration or schadenfreude. It’s just honesty… Honesty about what he stood for.
So what I’m saying is NOT that I support what happened to Charlie Kirk… I’m using his own words to point out that CHARLIE KIRK supported what happened to Charlie Kirk.
“HOW DARE YOU BE SO CRUEL! HE WAS A FATHER! HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT HIS KIDS?”
“WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? HAVE YOU NO EMPATHY?!?
I can go all day. Charlie Kirk was awful. He was NOT a good person. What’s that? You don’t think we should speak ill of the dead? Charlie literally said that Martin Luther King, Jr. was “awful” and “not a good person.” Charlie was a sexist. When a 14 year old girl asked him a question about her wanting to be a political journalist, he actually suggested that she go to school for “an MRS degree.” Charlie was racist. He talked openly about how Black pilots make him nervous, saying, “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.'” Charlie had a special place in his hateful heart for being both sexist and racist at the same time: He said that Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee are “affirmative action picks” and told them, “You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken seriously. [without affirmative action] You had to steal a white person’s slot.”
He actually said that. This is the person for which the president of the United States is ordering flags at half mast. Sit with that for a moment…
People act like he was some paragon of nonviolence. No. He wasn’t. Not even close. Just because he was made famous by his “prove me wrong” debate style doesn’t mean he didn’t advocate for violence. He cheered as the US military extrajudicially killed 11 people on a boat from long range because they were suspected of smuggling drugs. He said to “bomb the cartels.” Of the nation with the most incarcerated people on the planet, he said, “We don’t have enough people in prison in America. We need a lot more prisoners.” When Nancy Pelosi’s husband was brutally attacked and his skull was fractured, Charlie Kirk called for a “patriot” to bail him out. And now we have Elon Musk tweeting to his 200 million followers, “The Left is the party of murder,” before we have any idea who committed this murder.
But this is fairly routine now. Does anyone remember hearing about David DePape, the crazy person who broke into the Pelosi’s home and tried to commit murder? He was a FAR-RIGHT QAnon crazy person, reposting the My Pillow guy’s stolen election conspiracies… The same conspiracies pushed by Charlie Kirk. David DePape railed in his blog against People of Color, women, LGBTQIA+, Muslims, immigrants… Any of this sound like anyone else we know? He was an anti-vaxxer and he ALSO thought George Floyd was a scumbag who died of a drug overdose. A month before the Pelosi attack, he wrote that any journalist who challenged Trump’s election fraud claims “should be dragged straight out into the street and shot.” And the shooter at trump’s Butler, PA rally was also part of the “violent radical left…” Right up until they found out he was a republican. People asked elon’s AI “GROK” about American political parties and violence, and if you’re still reading, the answer probably won’t surprise you…
And now donald trump has weighed in—with no evidence whatsoever—on who is to blame for Charlie Kirk’s death: It’s “the radical left.” The party of “LET’S NOT POLITICIZE A TRAGEDY” has weighed in and started pointing fingers with startling speed. Trump’s confidante Laura Loomer called for trump to “shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization” and called the left a “national security threat.” This person with trump’s ear—without anything even resembling evidence—wrote, “They sent a trained sniper to assassinate Charlie Kirk while he was sitting next to a table of hats that said 47” and added “The Left are terrorists.” Later she alluded to calls for violent retribution, tweeting to her 1.7 million followers, “A message to the Left: Debate time is over. You ended it.” She added, “More people will be murdered if the Left isn’t crushed with the power of the state.” Stephen Miller’s wife said liberals “have blood on their hands” and Nancy Mace is blaming his death on democrats, saying “Democrats own this.” FoxNews’ Jesse Waters joined in and said, “Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. And what are we going to do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate?”
It’s very bewildering to watch as the people who throw their hands up at the steady drumbeat of school shootings in America, like “Well, there’s nothing we can do… I guess this is just part of the unfortunate reality of living in a country with more guns than people” are the SAME people who are so outraged that they’re wanting to start a civil war when that same gun violence touches one of their own. When kids are the victims of senseless gun violence, they’re the eggs that need to break when making a freedom omelette. When that same senseless gun violence ends the life of one of their heroes, IT HAD TO HAVE BEEN A TRAINED ASSASSIN! HIRED BY BARACK OBAMA!!!
I mean, I get that many people are upset—one of their ideological mouthpieces was murdered… But isn’t it weird how NONE of these folks had anywhere NEAR the same distain for “political violence” when a far-right trump-supporter Vance Boelter dressed up like a police officer and assassinated Minnesota democratic lawmaker Melissa Hortman, killing her, her husband Mark, and their Golden Retriever rescue service dog Gilbert… Or when that same republican extremist also shot State Senator John Hoffman and his wife…. While carrying a list of other democrats to he wanted to kill. At least Utah Senator Mike Lee condemned those shootings, saying, “This murder was a cowardly act of violence, an attack on champions of freedom.” Just kidding. Those were some of his remarks on Charlie Kirk’s death… When the democratic lawmakers were shot he posted “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way” & tweeted what I ASSUME (I guess?) is an attempt at a joke, “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” referencing somehow Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. But in Mike Lee’s defense, he—like trump and Loomer and Charlie Kirk—is just a truly, truly horrible person.
True to form, trump recorded a consoling yet encouraging message to the people of the United States, telling them, “It’s just horrible – so surprising to see it here. But we have to get over it. We have to move forward.” Just kidding again… Those were his comments to the people of Iowa just one day after a yet another school shooting took the life of a 6th grade student and wounded seven others on the first day of school. Technically, it was about 36 hours after the shooting. When he told them to “get over it” and “move forward,” that was the first things he had said on the shooting. To be fair, you can’t expect the guy to hold a press conference every time there is another school shooting in this country… He’d barely have any time to golf. Still, ANY comment is better than his non-existent comments on the assassination of Melissa Hortman. But within hours of the news of Charlie Kirk’s death, trump addressed the nation to calm rising tensions in an attempt to dissuade further violence. Just kidding a third time… He blamed the rise in political violence on the “radical left.”
So I’m definitely not happy about Charlie Kirk being killed. I’m not celebrating… I’m sad. My kids are sad. This murder makes us ALL less safe. It’s been less than 24 hours, we still have no idea who did it, and his death is already being used as a rallying cry for violence against people on the left. While I was doom-scrolling people’s thoughts, I was watching Django Unchained. And I was at the part of the movie where a runaway enslaved fighter was being ripped apart by dogs, and Calvin Candie comments, “Your boss looks a little green around the gills.” Django replies, “He just ain’t used to seein’ a man ripped apart by dogs is all.” Calvin says, “But you are used to it?” Django responds: “I’m just a little more used to Americans than he is.” And I started crying. Violence is like a national religion here… And gun deaths are like some twisted ritual. Here’s what my friend Kristen had to say… It felt right:
So while I don’t celebrate Charlie Kirk’s death, I don’t have to mourn the death of a terrible man either. Charlie Kirk was no hero. And if he is a martyr, he is only a martyr to a church so demented and warped by nationalism, bigotry, and white supremacy that if Jesus returned today, those church members would call ICE on him and have him thrown into one of our new concentration camps… A church so foreign to the Jesus I grew to love in my youth that I want nothing more to do with it. Here is one more take… I haven’t decided if I believe it or not yet:`
I’m not sure if I care. But I’m definitely not mourning. If I’m going to mourn anything, it’s the death of a part of me that believed a rational argument would be enough to change someone’s mind… The death of a part of me that DIDN’T enjoy watching the occasional nazi get punched in the face… The death of the part of me that still had faith in the christian church and christian leaders to speak to people in times like these and call our hearts & souls to something better. I mourn those deaths. I remember a time before the cult of trump infected so many minds. I remember a more compassionate me… A more nonviolent me… A more hopeful me… A BETTER me. I mourn THOSE losses. And I miss that time… But I will not miss Charlie Kirk.
This took a long time to write… I’m still working through some things. I wanted to thank all the calm, rational, loving voices in my life… In person and on social media. Thank you for the way your thoughts helped me work out my own. May we never lose hope, never lose our empathy, and never lose each other. If my writing or this blog matters to you, and you want to support me, you can do that either by BECOMING A PATRON, or by leaving a tip TIP ON PAYPAL or by Venmoing me at chris-boeskool. You can follow me ON FACEBOOK or ON BLUESKY. (Also, the words “Please care like this when it’s a third grade classroom” came from a meme I was sent that was created by AudreyLovesParis. Thank you for the simple truth of those words.)
The Boeskool 
I think a fitting epitaph on his grave marker would be his own words: “A few gun deaths is an acceptable cost of protecting the Second Amendment.” It’s ironic to many of us but it was his ‘ride or die’: he spoke his truth daily and this was his truth and I assume that he meant it. I don’t celebrate Charlie Kirk’s death, but I don’t have to mourn his death either. Again, using his very own words, “I think empathy is a New Age made-up term that does a lot of damage.” So I’m going to save my empathy for innocent, murdered school children.
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I’m always shocked but I guess I shouldn’t be… of how people take words out of context to make click bait, and essentially are lying about someone and their character. Go watch full clips, and not edited ones. The 2nd amendment “quote” is entirely plucked out of a full discussion, for example, as are many other quotes. Maybe you’d like people to do that to you too? Right? Do unto others… so let’s take everything out of context you say or others say… for gain, for clicks, for whatever it does for you. It is sick and deranged.