In the weeks since Charlie Kirk was mercilessly assassinated right in front of our very eyes, much of the focus has been on free speech, and who got punished for saying what.
Comedian Jimmy Kimmel was briefly taken off the air for a controversial monologue, only to rebound with spectacular ratings when he returned a few days later.
Across the country, according to The New York Times, nearly 150 people were fired or canceled for remarks, conversations or social media posts that upset the sensibilities of Kirk’s grieving faithful followers.
But one subject that’s getting nearly no attention is the issue that could be the most relevant to Kirk’s murder — guns.
It’s like we’ve been so caught up with debating the First Amendment, we’ve forgotten about the Second.
Kirk was shot. And killed. With a gun.
He was shot and killed with a gun in a nation where guns outnumber people almost 3-1.
And, as if the gun manufacturers weren’t producing enough weapons of destruction, amateurs are using 3D printers to make them in their basements.
Just 60 seconds after a shot rang out at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10 and cut down Kirk, 31, a conservative political activist with a wife and two young children, a 911 call in Evergreen, Colorado, revealed that a 16-year-old student at a local high school had opened fire on students, injuring two and killing himself.
There’s more.
In Dallas last week, a sniper, Joshua Jahn, 29, opened fire on an ICE field office, killing one detainee and wounding two more before killing himself. Authorities said he was targeting ICE agents but missed his mark.
“It seems that he did not intend to kill the detainees or harm them,” Nancy Larson, acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said at a news conference on Thursday. “It’s clear from these notes that he was targeting ICE agents and ICE personnel.”
There’s more.
In Queens last week, a 13-year-old boy was shot in the back of his head on his way to school at 8:20 a.m. Sanjay Samuel lingered in a coma for two days before he died.
He was killed on a Cambria Heights street named for another 13-year-old boy, Kevin Miller Jr., who was shot and killed by a stray bullet 16 years earlier.
“That’s the same sidewalk,” Kevin’s mother, Donna Hood-Greaves, told me last week. “Maybe just a few feet away.”
There are plenty more. But gun control opponents, like President Trump, blame everything but the guns.
“The continuing violence from Radical Left Terrorists, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, must be stopped,” Trump said on Truth Social. “ICE Officers, and other Brave Members of Law Enforcement, are under grave threat.”
But the bullet has no leftist or right-wing affiliation, no geopolitical ideology. Neither does the gun. It shoots first and asks questions never.
Even if Kirk were still alive, he’d be on the wrong side of the debate.
“I think it’s worth it 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,” Kirk said in 2023. “That is a prudent deal. It is rational,”
The Second Amendment says this: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
It doesn’t say there shouldn’t be a waiting period. It doesn’t say kids can carry them to school in their backpacks. It doesn’t say military-grade assault rifles are fine for everyone.
The problem with the debate is this: Either you’re for the Second Amendment or you’re for gun control
Why can’t we have both?
