Shooting people over their political opinions is wrong.
Shooting children in classrooms is wrong.
Shooting worshipers in a church is wrong.
Shooting presidential candidates is wrong.
Shooting a kid who is walking back from a store with a bag of Skittles is wrong.
Shooting congressmen playing baseball is wrong.
Shooting a store clerk is wrong.
Shooting your spouse after an argument is wrong.
Shooting another person over a turf war is wrong.
Shooting another motorist after a road rage incident is wrong.
Shooting a fireman who is answering a call for help is wrong.
Shooting an EMT who is answering a call for help is wrong.
Shooting your fellow soldiers on a military base is wrong.
Shooting someone over a drug deal gone bad is wrong.
Shooting another person over their religious beliefs is wrong.
Shooting a group of kids who won’t turn down the rap music is wrong.
Shooting a sleeping woman in her own bed is wrong.
Shooting a driver during an otherwise benign traffic stop is wrong.
Shooting someone over a simple disagreement is wrong.
Shooting someone during a robbery is wrong.
Shooting a teacher you don’t like is wrong.
Shooting a lady who is simply driving down the road is wrong.
Shooting college students on a campus is wrong.
Shooting at football games is wrong.
Shooting at basketball games is wrong.
Shooting your family is wrong.
Shooting dozens of people at a country music concert is wrong.
Shooting people inside a casino is wrong.
Shooting people at a Walmart is wrong.
Shooting people at a restaurant is wrong.
Shooting people at a movie theater is wrong.
Shooting people at a nightclub is wrong.
Shooting people at a post office is wrong.
Shooting people at a gas station is wrong.
Shooting priests and pastors is wrong.
Shooting cops is wrong.
Shooting Republicans is wrong.
Shooting Democrats is wrong.
Shooting libertarians is wrong.
Shooting racists is wrong.
Shooting flaming liberals is wrong.
Shooting Black people is wrong.
Shooting white people is wrong.
Shooting. People. Is. Wrong.
On this, if on nothing else, we should be able to agree. And in fact, on this, almost all of us do agree.
Neither Charlie Kirk or any of the thousands of people who fit into the list above deserved to be shot dead. None of them, and especially the kids.
Yet, they all have been.
We can pretend that we don’t know the reality or can’t fathom the cause. But we do.
The fact of the matter is that mentally unstable people walk among us—always have—and those people are swayed easily, for whatever reason, into violence. In today’s world, with the saturation of firearms and the gun culture that permeates every fabric of American society, the violence of choice is almost always gun violence.
You can defend the gun all you’d like, but the simple, undeniable fact is that when a disturbed individual reaches the breaking point and slides over the edge, he almost always—999 times out of a thousand—reaches for a gun. Not a knife. Not a bat. Not a bomb. A gun.
We are not going to tone down the political rhetoric, nor should we be expected to do so. It is an American’s right to espouse whatever political beliefs—or any other kind of beliefs—as loudly and boisterously as he or she chooses. You can’t, on one hand, defend Charlie Kirk’s divisive language because you agree with it and then condemn the equally vitriolic rhetoric of Democrats because you don’t. That’s hypocrisy. Both parties are entitled to their beliefs and their voices.
But what we can control—what we’ve always been able to control and limit—is the access we grant to firearms and the culture surrounding those weapons. And we have failed to assert anything approaching reasonable control.
It has cost us dearly.
That video of Kirk being shot is devastating to watch. But bullets do the same thing to school children. And to the people in church pews. And to all the people mentioned above.
Gun violence knows no political boundaries. It knows no economic boundaries. It knows no age boundaries. It does not discriminate.
There’s only one way to curtail it: Do something about the guns.
