[CW: This article discusses gun violence.]
I want to discuss the normalization of gun violence as a form of resistance, right-wing extremism, the United States’ abhorrent selective mourning, and—you saw it coming—the death of Charlie Kirk. However, there are a couple of reasons why Kirk’s name is not in the title. First, among the Trump administration’s virtue signaling via hyperbolized memorials and Instagram posts, I want to decenter Kirk and draw our attention back to the thousands of lives that have been taken before him and will undoubtedly be taken after him due to gun violence. Second, this article is not inherently about Kirk, but about the violence that he and people like him encouraged, that continues to be normalized as a political tool, and that ultimately took his life.
I will not feign grief at the death of Charlie Kirk. He never said or did anything in his public life that would evoke that particular emotion within me. His death, however, does not bring me joy. In fact, I feel a great sadness, not specifically for the death of a man like Charlie Kirk but because his killing is one more piece of evidence that gun violence has been normalized as a tool of control. I feel great sadness because a woman lost her life partner. Children lost their father. However, I do feel conflicted. Kirk has shown us that he would certainly not grieve for our deaths. In April of 2023, Kirk stated that he believes it is “…worth it 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.” Kirk’s assertion that gun deaths are “worth it” is, at a minimum, grotesquely ironic. It echoes how Kirk felt that his privilege shielded him from the same gun violence he sanitized and is reflective of how power structures and right-wing extremism seek to normalize violence as a tool of dominance. Allow me to present a quote from a Newsweek article covering Pastor Howard-John Wesley’s sermon on the public reaction to Kirk’s death:
“Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be assassinated. But I am overwhelmed seeing the flags at half-staff, calling this nation to honor and venerate a man who … spent all of his life sowing seeds of division and hate into this land … of hearing people with selective rage who are mad about Charlie Kirk but didn’t give a damn about Melissa Hortman and her husband when they were shot down in their home.”
Pastor Wesley’s sentiment of “selective rage” provides context for the emotions many of us have felt over the past months: anger at the US’ complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza—now recognized by a UN comission of inquiry; sorrow for the (approximately) 38,478 victims of mass shootings in the US in 2025 alone; outrage at the abductions and deportations of at least 1.6 million immigrants as of August, 2025; hopelessness for the censorship of our media and, of course, Kirk’s “martyrdom.”
Although the gun control policies Kirk vehemently opposed were also the ones that could have saved him, no one deserves to die. And yet, we are watching as our government “mourns” Kirk and condemns the gun violence that took his life, while also attempting to sweep the very same violence that took thousands of lives before him under the rug. Trump’s America is one of morbid paradoxes and contradictions: If you condemn gun violence, you must condemn all gun violence.
Achille Mbembe’s theory of “Necropolitics” feels particularly salient as it describes how those in power determine whose lives are worthy of collective mourning, as opposed to those whose lives are expendable or merely another object for our “thoughts and prayers.” Mbembe, a political theorist and professor at the University of Witwatersrand at South Africa, first coined the term in 2003, building on Foucault’s concept of biopower. “Necropolitics” describes how certain racialized populations are subjected to live in places and ways that are synonymous with death, thereby rendering these populations “the walking dead,” in Mbembe’s own words; it describes how power hierarchies determine who lives and dies as a form of biopolitical control. Necropolitics certainly resonates in the treatment of gun violence victims in America: The same day Kirk was shot in Utah, Matthew Silverstone, a student at Evergreen High School, was similarly attacked just over the hills in Colorado, and remains in critical condition.
While gun violence has been the leading cause of death among all children since 2020, it goes largely undiscussed that gun violence has also been the leading cause of death among Black and Brown children in America since 2006. Yet, the flag was not, nor was it ever, flown at half-mast that day for those children of color, and it certainly was not for Matthew. As Pastor Wesley put so eloquently, grief was demanded that day for a man who spent his life contributing to the epidemic of gun violence. While Kirk was alive, they used him as a vehicle for their hatred, and, now, they are using his death as a pulpit for their extremist agenda. While the Trump administration clearly valued his life over the thousands of other gun violence victims, he is more useful to them now in death than in life.
As a straight, white, cisgender man from the Democratic state of California, I am not in a social position where I am threatened, nor can I make claims on what the “appropriate” use of political violence is, as my privilege shapes the lens through which I view such violence. But this is my message: You cannot defeat an extremist symbol like Charlie Kirk by letting that symbol’s hatred mold you into exactly what the authoritative ruling class wants you to be. Kirk’s killer did not enact justice, but delivered an even more enhanced weapon. This individual did not silence Kirk, but amplified all of his harmful rhetoric, and transformed a mediocre political instigator into an immortalized, unquestionable icon within the very authoritative security state his killer allegedly sought to dismantle. Now, Kirk is rendered a martyr for “free speech” and an inspiration for the demonization of progressiveness as “extremism.” Oh, how the Trump administration will continue to use Kirk’s newfound “martyrdom” to paint every dissenting voice and cry for a more just world as “un-American,” to enhance surveillance, empower the American police state and legitimize every single poisonous thing they, as well as Kirk, ever said.
If we were to celebrate Kirk’s death, then all we would do is strengthen the narratives that cause immeasurable harm to our communities. Yet, we are left with more questions than answers here: what do we do with our anger that we have not already done? How can we express our fear, our outrage, or our desire for change without resorting to violence? How do we feel hope in the midst of a political Armageddon? How do we know when and even if we should feel empathy for anyone who views the very same empathy as weakness? I do not know, but I return to Pastor Wesley for even a semblance of an answer. “How you die does not redeem how you lived. I can abhor the violence that took your life, but I don’t have to celebrate how you chose to live.” We must condemn gun violence as well as Kirk’s murder not only because it furthers the Trump administration’s destruction of our democracy, but because it amplifies the hatred Kirk spread across America.
Indeed, Kirk perpetuated a reprehensible and sadistic caricature of America, devoid of empathy, complexity and the burden of its terrible history. The difficult truth, however, is that the Charlie Kirks of the world are not our enemy. Our true enemies are those in power who create those like him and facilitate deep and widespread hatred. Kirk was not a “one of a kind” or “groundbreaking” political figure; he was one of many ignorant byproducts of a system that rewards spectacle and normalizes political violence as a form of governance. And, although his killing reflects the anger we are most certainly all feeling, it spread the embers of the extremist fire we seek to extinguish, and got us closer to contributing to the violence Kirk and those like him celebrated.