Charlie Kirk dead

[Booneymil]

The last thread was taken down because of personal insults towards the man.

We should be able to have a thread about this news topic.

Report any insulting posts. Mumsnet can you please just delete the offending posts, instead of deleting the whole thread?

Thank you.

Charlie Kirk has died today. He was shot at a public talk that he was giving.

Who was that shooter? Terrifying. I wonder if they could have been caught before?

Why were there no bag searches? A journalist there interviewed by the Guardian said that was odd.

He said it while answering a question about gun deaths during a TPUSA Faith event on 5th April 2023 on the Salt Lake City campus of Awaken Church. Specifically, he said "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."

Finally, a sane and humane post!

While I'll condem his killing (and fear what may come of it), Kirk was (like many so-called supporters of free speech, on the right) engaged in suppressing left wing speech that he disagreed with. See the Professor Watchlist.

In a debate questions should be asked in good faith, I don't believe such a question can be considered to be so.

I think CK was notable for ploughing through such questions whether on guns or abortion and doubling down on his stated beliefs. I think that by answering such questions he made himself appear more unpleasant than he otherwise would have. And I have no doubt this contributed to his murder.

Did CK make unprompted declarations that school shootings etc were a price worth paying for freedom or in response to leading questions? (I don't know) Do the people asking such questions bear some responsibility for his image and therefore the nature of his death?

So is it 'family values' that a preteen girl who has been raped should not be allowed to have an abortion?

I'm glad I don't know any families with those values!

Of course, and it's also possible to be appalled at the idea of murder, especially political assassination, and feeling sorry for his (probably long suffering) wife and family while not being particularly bothered by his loss.

Kirk was an adult, an intelligent and articulate one.

I think you're taking away his agency here. I don't believe he was pressured to say those things, I believe he was a strong character who stated what he truly believed- an admirable quality, even if the views were- often less than admirable.

The murder is VILE. Let no one with any humanity say otherwise.

But whitewashing Kirk's image infantilises him : as if it's the interviewer's responsibility that Kirk expressed those views. No, Kirk freely chose to answer those questions w those words

I do not believe that interviewers should be holding back in case an evil kook decides to murder based on a reply given by an interviewee.

The murder is solely the responsibility of the murderer. It's very dangerous to say that other people's words caused the murder. It's the same line of thought that imprisons brave people like Glinner.

I DO think security there was astoundingly weak. Bag searches could have saved Kirk's life!

I believe the reason for this is that it's actually legal to carry concealed firearms on campus in this state. So there was no basis for searching bags.

Is it 'measured' to say the above thing about rape & abortion?

Or to say women over 30 are by default not attractive to men (despite marrying a 32yo...)

Or that the Pill automatically makes women 'crazy and bitter'?

Unfortunately the Republicans regularly ignore and downplay children being killed in school shootings. They support the gun lobby at all costs. It is lunacy.

Of course nobody should be shot but they blatantly DO NOT CARE that defenseless children are shot frequently. Think about that.

Oh my goodness. How very sad. I liked hearing him debate. Thus is just so awful.

Did he say 'cost' or 'necessary cost'? There's a big difference. Anyway, the American gun laws are crazy but there are plenty on the left who love their guns. Look at the various politically-motivated murderers of recent months, antifa, the various Occupy movements, the 'arms all trans' people. In horseshoe politics guns are no longer a left/right thing.

There are perfectly reasonable people who say things like 'Better ten guilty men walk free than one innocent man go to jail.' If one of them were killed by a man who had got off from a previous murder and been let loose on the public then it might be cause for questioning the system but should it invite the kind of unpleasant schadenfreude this deeply disturbing assassination has invoked?

Wtf? I'm sorry, but that's insane. How anyone feels safe in those colleges is beyond me.

The unthinking workship of the gun is like a tribe bowing before a god that demands human sacrifices. How many more?

Would this potential make MAGA support at least a little bit more gun control? Or not ..?

So if you’re not left-wing in your political beliefs, you are saying this is the inevitable consequence? Good grief! I’m shocked at the level of nastiness I’ve seen on here tonight…

I think it's clear CurlewKate means that inevitably the kind of lax gun laws Kirk supported cause a lot of death.
I do not think she is saying he deserved it, or is referring to general right wing views, only his views on guns.

Am I right, @CurlewKate?

"I think empathy is a made up New Age term that does a lot of damage."

Charlie Kirk, 2022

Kirk travelled around university campuses inviting students to debate with him. He didn't have to do that. People asked him questions and he answered them, honestly, based on his firmly-held beliefs. He could have chosen to moderate his language to make his views more palatable, but he didn't - that was his choice. He put himself out there and the way he presented himself was entirely his responsibility, so for you to attempt to shift that responsibility to his audiences is extraordinary and utterly disingenuous.

The gun lobby (and Charlie Kirk's) position seems to be that these sorts of things mean MORE people need to be armed. For their own protection.

I still can't believe some of the awful posts re basically he was a trump supporter so deserved to die. I find that hard to stomach. Come on all life is valuable, no one wants someone dead, or shouldn't, and no one should actually be shot. It's a calamity.

plus like others I didnt realise how young he was, he looked older, spoke more maturely. He was only 31. With a wife and 2 kids. This is so sad.

I don't support Trump, I didn't agree with CK on gun laws, or abortion. He was too conservative for me.

But I did agree with him on trans issues. I believe you cant change sex. A woman is a woman. I used to love watching him debate, as he visited all the uni campuses. He was incredibly bright, very articulate, very quick witted and could debate well. Although I did see him get caught out by a uk student!

But as someone who liked his debates re trans and how women are women, I loved watching his debates.

He only said the truth. You can't change sex. And for this he deserved to die? No!

Exactly. It's the same kind of argument you hear from TRAs : 'words are violence', from the extreme bits of BLM (see the accusations that a NYT op-ed saying to send troops in to quell the riots was 'putting people in danger), & from the government over migrant protests (I actually think Lucy Connolly should have gone to prison for a short time, bc her post, while imo obvs hyperbole, was made at the height of a dangerous riot where hotel arson was a real possibility. But the sentence was far too long and punitive. I also think the Labour man who talked about 'cutting Tory throats' should also be in jail, bc again while surely not sincere if was directly inciting violence. But generally I think there has been way too much censorship of legitimate migrantion criticism under the blanket of 'protection from violence' )

He actually said "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."
I'm not sure "schadenfreude" about his murder is the right word from the posts I've read on here - it seems more like indifference to me.

It’s actually worse than that.
In Utah, anyone who has a concealed carry permit can openly carry a weapon, whether it's a pistol or a rifle, on college campuses if they are over 18.

To all the posters bringing up stuff he said that they (and I!) don't agree withas an excuse for what happened: you are aligning yourselves with people who are condoning his murder. The outbreak of glee and gloating on social media is appalling. You're proving his point: that when you refuse to talk or allow others to talk, then violence breaks out. We're seeing this throughout the once-peaceful Western civilisations. The whole point about the democratic system is that it allows debate and dissent. But right now, too many people are giving themselves permission to express their own dissent with violence rather than words, and we're seeing this on our streets every damn weekend. We need to remember that flawed though it is, a democratic parliamentary multiparty system is the best one we've got. Every other system will punish you for wrongthink, sometimes with death. Charlie Kirk was a decent human being with strong opinions that I didn't fully agree with. He did not deserve to be murdered. Words are not violence: actual violence IS violence.

I'm certainly not the best person to argue a pro Kirk position, I disagreed with him on too many issues and consequently didn't follow him closely enough for me now to do justice to his views. Certainly he would have disagree with the liberal basis of free speech that I would put forward. maybe others here will argue it.

But keeping a watch list on notorious, public, bad actors is hardly beyond the pale - any activist or politically oriented organization does it. Nor is calling out the extreme ideological capture and intellectual dishonesty of American universities. And more broadly he was 100% correct - there was (and still is) a huge coercive force in place to systematically suppress voices ''on the far right' - and in the trans debate that meant suppressing those of gc women, even those well left of center. It's extremely destructive to our democracies. It's destroyed the trust of millions of citizens in their civic and governing institutions.