RIP Charlie Kirk

 

     Gun violence has crept back into MAGA World. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at a rally at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah this afternoon. The alleged shooter has already been apprehended. The lead image above was taken just moments before Kirk was shot in the neck.

     While obviously it's a tragedy for Kirk's circle, starting with his wife and kids, one necessarily has to ask how the right wing feels about its Second Amendment now. One also has to ask if this will change anything. Well, here's my answer:

     It will not. 

     After all, Congress notably did not enact any gun legislation after Congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana was shot in the hip years ago during a practice for the Congressional baseball game. Nor did they even meaningfully address the issue when Trump was allegedly shot in Butler, PA July last year.

     In fact, rather than address the issue of the prevalence of gun violence and easy access to firearms, MAGA, predictably, began spinning Kirk's shooting death as a politically motivated act, leading Elon Musk to say that "the left is the party of murder." (Which is ridiculous because most mass shootings are carried out by right wingers.)

     Obviously, this overheated rhetoric doesn't help matters any and, not only is it counterproductive, it also doesn't address the root cause of gun violence. Around the same time as the shooting in Utah, there was a school shooting in Colorado in which three people, including the shooter, were shot.

     But nobody's talking about that. MAGA World is too busy shedding tears over Charlie Kirk.

     And, again, what happened to Charlie Kirk was a tragedy and no one deserves that. Mr. Kirk wasn't just a right wing provocateur but was also a family man who leaves behind a wife and children.

     And while we have to offer our sympathy for his family and think of them, we also need to think about what caused this to happen. We need to keep reminding ourselves that in a country, the only country, in which here are more guns than citizens, these acts of terrorism and murder will inevitably happen.

      Yes, what happened to Charlie Kirk today was senseless and cowardly. But if we're going to mourn his death, we also have to mourn the deaths of the countess people who have lost their lives to mass shootings and individual acts of murder. And I don't recall the right wing shedding any tears over the murders of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband. They were also notoriously silent when Judge Esther Salas' son was shot and killed and her husband wounded.

     Instead, MAGA World harrumphs and turns its collective head when it's one of their own who commit these heinous acts, even blaming the victims for their own fate.

     Gun violence cannot be the norm in this country yet it is. So it's time to ask the right wing again and again, "What are you going to do about it?"

     

     Well, we all know what Charlie Kirk himself said about it a couple of years ago.