Conservative pundit and activist Charlie Kirk was a staunch advocate for weapons, even arguing in 2023 that “some gun deaths” have been worthwhile “in order that we will have the Second Modification.”
On Wednesday, he was shot and killed, highlighting the continued and uniquely American downside with gun violence—emboldened by the correct’s lengthy love affair with weapons.
Most Individuals assist the Second Modification proper to personal weapons, however they concurrently again rules to protect public security. A 2024 Morning Consult poll discovered that the extremist pro-gun stance of the Republican Social gathering is out of contact not solely with most Individuals, however even amongst Individuals who’re gun house owners themselves.
For example, President Donald Trump’s 2024 marketing campaign known as for slicing federal funding for analysis into gun violence analysis. Solely 33% of voters supported this concept, alongside 44% of Trump voters and 43% of gun house owners.
Equally, Trump’s concept to restrict state gun legal guidelines, finish gun violence prevention applications, and cut back assist for group gun violence prevention applications had low ranges of assist among the many voting public—33% and underneath.
The American public’s assist for gun rules may need been heightened by the correct’s stomach-turning behavior of prioritizing weapons over lives.
In 2013, after a gun management invoice died within the Senate, President Barack Obama comforted the households of the Sandy Hook Elementary Faculty capturing the place 20 kids between the ages of six and 7 have been murdered alongside six grownup workers members.
In an ad posted online by the Republican Nationwide Committee, Obama was mocked with a voiceover claiming that his second time period was a failure after 100 days.
“Possibly I ought to simply pack up and go house,” it stated.
And several other years later, Fox Information mocked Obama for crying in regards to the lack of harmless lives at Sandy Hook.
Republicans have embraced their position as gun extremists, which has been rewarded with tens of millions in assist from the scandal-plagued Nationwide Rifle Affiliation.
In the course of the 2024 election cycle, the NRA spent more than $10 million to elect Republicans—although that’s a substantial decline from the nearly $30 million it spent in the course of the 2020 cycle.
NRA spending was doubtless down on account of a sequence of scandals, together with infiltration by a Russian intelligence asset and millions of dollars allegedly spent by former chief Wayne LaPierre.
Trump has been a staunch NRA ally, buying and selling in early endorsements in favor of a lax method to gun legal guidelines and regulatory efforts meant to extend the move of weapons all through the nation.
Although, after the Aug. 27 shooting in Minneapolis, Trump and the NRA discovered something to disagree on when the Trump administration floated the thought of denying gun rights to transgender folks.
However the ties between the correct and weapons go a lot deeper than NRA cash.
Conservatism embraces gun tradition as an try to regulate issues. Very like right-wing fear of diverse cities, conservatism asserts gun rights—regardless of the menace to public security—as a result of weapons are seen as a technique to management issues. The fitting has a deep-seated situation with rising gender and racial range, so weapons are seen as a technique to preserve that in test.
After Obama was elected the primary Black president in U.S. historical past, ammunition and gun sales soared.
Gun tradition figures like Ted Nugent, who was an NRA board member, advocated for guns whereas pushing racist rhetoric and calling for figures like Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to be hanged. This was a part of the correct’s try to say management over a rustic that it believes has gotten uncontrolled.
On the similar time, conservatives have used weapons to place themselves as underdogs. In 2020, Nugent posted a meme making the ridiculous comparability between the “want” to personal an AR-15 assault rifle and civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, who defiantly sat within the entrance of a segregated bus.
Weapons are additionally utilized by the correct to strengthen a culture of faux machismo. Many on the correct consider that proudly owning and utilizing weapons is a show of energy, whereas they deride purported female weak point from teams like Moms Demand Action for opposing gun violence.
Up till the early 2000s, Democrats have been usually terrified of advocating for gun security. It was lengthy believed that the NRA warfare chest was not value opposing. However after multiple mass shootings—notably at Sandy Hook—mixed with proof of the NRA’s political weak point, the social gathering has stepped up.
President Joe Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022, and whereas the regulation didn’t go so far as many wished, it did present funding for gun violence prevention and added new federal applications to chop down on gun violence.
At present, the Trump administration is working to undo lots of the modifications from that regulation, which is able to doubtless result in extra gun deaths.
Demise from gun violence is down from its height in the course of the coronavirus pandemic, however there have been nonetheless greater than 16,700 gun-related deaths in 2024. Up to now in 2025, the Gun Violence Archive has catalogued greater than 10,300 gun deaths.
Charlie Kirk is certainly one of them. And the correct nonetheless loves their weapons.
