Charlie Kirk’s death is another wake-up call on political violence. Will we heed it?
The Wednesday shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk is a tragedy and an abomination.
It's a tragedy for Kirk's family.
It's a tragedy for the students on the campus of Utah Valley University who'd gathered under blue skies to hear Kirk do what he did best: Debate people.
And it's a tragedy for the rest of us.
Because even if you didn't agree with Charlie Kirk, and millions of people did not, this is a blow against civil debate, civil society and the principles we hold dear as a country.
And, sadly, it's neither the first time this has happened. Nor is it likely to be the last.
The death of Kirk, a 31-year-old father, comes just months after Melissa Hortman, the former speaker of Minnesota's House of Representatives, was shot dead in her home , along with her husband and her dog.
It comes after someone set fire to Pennsylvania's executive residence, where the state's Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, his family and friends had bedded down after a Passover seder . No one was hurt, but it all could have ended in tragedy.
There were two attempts on President Donald Trump's life on the campaign trail in 2024. Someone tried to kill the husband of former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Authorities foiled a kidnapping plot aimed at Michigan's Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., survived a grim attempt on her life . And U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., was seriously wounded in 2017 .
There is understandably widespread public concern about this problem.
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of respondents to an October 2024 poll by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said they were concerned about political violence.
More worryingly, there is no consensus on how to solve it. And some Americans — one in five respondents to an April 2024 PBS/Marist College poll — think violence may solve the nation's political divisions .
Shortly before 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that a suspect in Kirk's shooting had been taken into custody .
Still, two things stand out.
As horrifying as this spasm of violence in Utah was, there is something startlingly normal about it. You don't have to look any further than that catalog of tragedy above to understand that's the case.
Political commentators have noted this disturbing trend. As CNN host Michael Smerconish said during an appearance in Boston last month for a national conference of state lawmakers.
"There's a brazen sense of embracing violence and somehow rationalizing it," he observed.
The three-day meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures, a kind of industry trade group for people whose business is state government, opened with an emotional tribute to the June assassination of Hortman, her husband, and the family's beloved dog.
Current Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth , a Republican who was in the minority when Hortman held the gavel, said her onetime colleague never made her feel shut out of the process.
"When I was first elected as minority leader by my caucus in 2023, Melissa, as Speaker of the House, reached out to me right away and offered a weekly meeting," Demuth said.
That kind of bipartisanship, in our hyperpartisan time, is vanishingly rare. Too often, we talk past each other or settle for insults when reconciliation or compromise would be more suited to the moment.
Kirk's death came the day before the 24th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania, a national day of mourning.
Boston, where two of the doomed flights originated , has a direct tie to the tragedy.
In the days after that attack, America was briefly the nation we teach our kids about: United and standing together against a common enemy. There was the most fleeting of senses that it was the moment we would put our differences aside and stand as the example we wanted to set for the rest of the world.
Just about a quarter-century later, that idealism feels, at best, misplaced. We are historically polarized , and, thanks to social media, it's now possible to go entire days without encountering a view that's opposite to your beliefs.
Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman, a Democrat who was grievously wounded in the same explosion of violence that led to Hortman's death spoke, via a remote connection, at that same Boston conference last month.
His admonition then seems applicable now.
"We can't let the evil in the night win," he said.
Read more analysis from John L. Micek
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