Two tragedies happened this past week, September 10th, 2025. A school shooting in Denver and the shooting of Charlie Kirk. Neither should have happened. Sadly, one got a lot more press than the other.
Charlie Kirk did not deserve to die for his beliefs, his rhetoric, his free speech. Full Stop.
Let’s be clear, I in no way agreed with, supported, or found Charlie Kirk to be a positive influence on society. To me, he was a detestable human being that espoused division, racism, misogyny, fascism, and hate. I do not, however, feel he deserved to be the recipient of violence of any kind, especially being shot to death.
We have a problem in this country where guns are in the solution set to solve problems. Charlie himself vehemently promoted second amendment rights, to a fault. He remarked that gun deaths “are worth it” (clip here) to preserve the right to bare arms. This is the fundamental problem.
There are plenty of nations that have gun control with no ill effect on their rights to keep and bare arms. There are checks and balances that are there to help restrict access to guns for people that likely should not have access to them. This is a reasonable, adult, evolved way to handle something. It’s an admittance that there are some in our society that just aren’t going to handle the responsibility an implement of death deserves.
We have people take a test to drive, be licensed, and carry insurance. A vehicle, if driven irresponsibly, can injure, or kill people.
Pretty much anything that could negatively impact human life, we require some type of licensing or certification to do.
I digress.
Charlie, like many others on the right, have disgusting views to many folks. They can say the same from their point of view about those on the opposite side. Neither is a reason to resort to violence. It solves nothing in the end.
All the calls for war, revenge, retribution, blaming the left/democrats, rhetoric, even from the president, is useless. This is the problem. It’s that kind of behavior that is the problem, on all sides.
It’s not a political party, your sexuality, your religion, socio-economic status, the music, the video games, etc. It’s us and how we use tools to deal with life, and mental illness maybe. Maybe Jerry Springer (ok, not TV either).
It’s really about the solution set. I’ll define this using the math definition – the collection of all possible values that satisfy a given equation, inequality, or system of equations/inequalities, making the statement true. We can equate this to the set of tools (values) that all of us carry with us to apply to life’s problems (equations) to try and solve them. As long as guns are part of it, senseless, easily preventable death will be the result.
An example to easily point out the flaw – (equation)someone makes me angry and says things I don’t believe in or agree with – (tool to apply to situation) hammer.
Remove hammer, insert gun. Not a good solution set.
Discourse should be the rule of thumb. I didn’t agree with Charlie Kirk’s style, frankly it was less debate and more baiting, dropping sound bites to get reactions, and pushing the envelope to drum up controversy. But, he had a right to say it and he openly had public discourse with others that didn’t agree with him. Talk, while it can easily enflame emotions, doesn’t kill or injure anyone. It should stop there.