Charlie Kirk Deserved the Life He Callously Denied Others

I read the news, stepped into my car, and let out a guttural scream. 

Charlie Kirk, 31, had been shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University.

I did not scream because I supported him. As a progressive, I reject his hyperconservatism and right-wing positions. I screamed because every life is precious and worth protecting, including his.

Kirk is survived by his wife, Erika, and their two children—all of whom were present when he was shot. He founded Turning Point USA, an organization that mobilized young Americans in support of Donald Trump and his right-wing agenda. He championed many destructive causes: Christian nationalism, anti-LGBTQ policies, anti-immigrant rhetoric, and racist opinions. His activism reached hundreds of thousands of young people, shaping a political culture that often harmed the most vulnerable.

Yet however reprehensible a figure he was, however harmful his positions may have been, celebrating his death cannot be justified—certainly not from a Christian perspective. There is nothing to celebrate in the loss of a human life. Every person, even those who harm us, bears an inherent dignity that can never be erased.

As we await further investigation into the shooter’s motives, I am troubled by the reactions flooding social media: those who cheer the assassination or dismiss it with indifference. This is why I screamed. This is why tears welled in my eyes. My cry was for what Kirk’s assassination reveals about the state of this country I call home: a place plagued by gun violence and hollowed by anti-democratic impulses, where political violence can find cheerleaders across the political spectrum.

In the midst of this, I came across a reflection from pastor-activist Trey Ferguson on Threads. He wrote:

Loving an enemy is wanting better for them than they want for themselves, recognizing that your welfare is intertwined.

Nobody is free until all of us are free. Nobody is safe until all of us are safe.

I will never downplay the seeds this man has sown.

And I will always pray that they wither, so that no one (including him and his children) has to eat from that kinda tree.

It was a sobering reminder that our freedom and safety are inseparably bound to those who oppose us. As an immigrant, I opposed Kirk’s crucial role in electing Donald Trump, whose deportation agenda has threatened my family, my friends, and immigrant communities like mine.

But Ferguson is right: We cannot wish the same torment on our enemies. To flourish, we must struggle against the system that threatens us all. No matter where we fall on the political spectrum, no matter how powerful or how vulnerable, we live within a structural reality that pits us against one another—and that same structure will eventually put us all to death.

I am referring to the scourge of rampant gun violence, which some media outlets now call the “new normal” in American life. The BBC reports that mass shootings in the U.S. have “risen sharply” in recent years. In 2025 alone, there have already been more than 300 shootings, including June 14, when Minnesota politician Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated by a “far-right zealot”; Aug. 27, when a gunman opened fire during a school-wide Mass at the Church of the Annunciation, killing two children and injuring many others; and Sept. 10, when Charlie Kirk was assassinated onstage in Utah while, on the same day, a Colorado school shooting left one student critically wounded and another injured.

In all of this, there emerges a common denominator: guns.

We must declare that the U.S. is facing a severe gun crisis, as we have for a long time. The active circulation of guns throughout our society, and the $91.7 billion in massive profits it presents to the capitalist class, is an existential threat that must be struggled against, dismantled, and abolished in order to secure true safety for all.

It is a tragic irony that Kirk himself was killed by the very gun culture he so fiercely defended. He once argued that gun deaths and shootings were “worth it” to preserve the Second Amendment. His death—alongside our era’s mass shootings and political assassinations—signals a dire future of escalating bloodshed and turmoil. As The Nation warns, we are entering “a terrible new era of political violence.” We must awaken to it before it is too late.

We must reject the tired rhetoric of pro-gun activists who shift blame onto individuals while ignoring the deeper structural reality that guns exist in staggering numbers, and that access to them in the U.S. is dangerously easy. As Christians, our duty is clear: For the sake of all, we are called to pursue stronger gun control before this culture of violence erupts into something even more uncontrollable. As Ferguson wrote, we must do this in obedience to the divine command to “love our neighbors”—not only those who love us back, but also those who oppose us, threaten us, even call us enemies.

This does not mean excusing Kirk’s rhetoric or political positions. But it does mean affirming that even those we oppose deserve life, dignity, and safety.

READ MORE: I Rejected Charlie Kirk's Politics. That's Why I Grieve His Death

As Ferguson reminds us, to love our enemies is to “[want] better for them than they want for themselves”—a call that feels indispensable in a moment as dire as this. Kirk may not have known better. In many ways, he refused to know better. But his death confronts us with an urgent task: to ensure that no one else meets the same fate under this regime of guns. 

We must encourage those condoning political violence to remember that this is not a faithful Christian response. Instead, I urge us to remember the Jesus we confess as Lord—the one who healed the ear of his captor (Luke 22:49-51) and prayed for the forgiveness of those who executed him (Luke 23:34). This is the Lord who rejects a culture of violence and instead embodies the radicality of love: “But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you… Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:27-28, 31).

We don’t know the shooter’s motivations, but if they were political, Pastor J.R. Forasteros reminds us that political violence is not only theologically inconsistent but also ineffective. It will not bring lasting change. It only deepens the very culture of violence we are stuck in. To kill a political opponent, no matter how immoral they may be, is to participate in the same violent structure we claim to resist. It will only breed more violence.

We must be clear about the ends to which we direct our political actions. If we seek lasting peace, then we must take up the tools of peace, not the tools of war. As Black feminist thinker Audre Lorde observed, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” While oppressors, fascists, and capitalists wield instruments of destruction to enforce cycles of violence, we are called to pursue a different, more radical path.

We are called to the divine radicality of love—a powerful, transformative nonviolence that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. described as the creation of “a community at peace with itself.” True and lasting peace cannot be forged using the same weapons that have long oppressed us, whether through guns or coercion. Womanist theologian Delores S. Williams reminds us that we must move beyond the narratives often deployed to justify cycles of violence and instead pursue what she terms “quality of life” for all. Only the radicality of love can achieve this.

Love is radical because it defies the normativity of violence and refuses the logic of fear and coercion. Love is a relentlessly inclusive choice that seeks flourishing even for those who threaten us.

Hence, this is the challenge we must embrace—for the present we seek to heal and for the future we must build together.

True and lasting peace cannot be forged using the same weapons that have long oppressed us, whether through guns or coercion.