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Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah

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Re: Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah

#411
post #389

There's video of the police carrying someone away, with his pants down. They drop him on his face at one point. Apparently the wrong guy. Utah has what they call "constitutional carry." Extremely permissive gun laws. I'd bet there were several people carrying concealed in that crowd, not counting security and police.

Reports are that the single shot came from ~200 yards/meters away, which is basically the worst case scenario for good-guy-with-a-gun. In an active shooter situation, an armed bystander could in principle stop an attacker from continuing, but the only way that an armed bystander could hope to stop an assassination is if they were walking around looking for trouble.

Regardless of where you stand on the subject of concealed carry, I don't think its controversial to say we shouldn't be encouraging untrained/unvetted folks to go seek out would-be assassins before they have demonstrated themselves to be a danger. That's exactly how "armed security" shot and killed an actual bystander at the Salt Lake City 50501 demonstration earlier this year.

Re: Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah

#414

I was just at a conference today where one of the presenters referenced the "Trust barometer": https://www.edelman.com/trust/2025/trust-barometer According to that study, 23% approved of the statement "I approve hostile activism to drive change by threatening or committing violence". It's even higher if you only focus on 18-34 year olds. Full report here: https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2025-0..…

These studies are interest but should equally be interpreted as the desire for change - and I think it is reasonable to say that there is a huge desire for change.

In particular regard anti democratic developments, an increasing oligarchy, and increased inequality.

If I was a leader, I would take this really seriously and start to make some hard decisions.

Re: Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah

#415

I bang on a lot about not saying things like "this person is a threat to democracy" and other such apocalyptic statements. This right here is a perfect example of why: when you steep people in a culture that tells them someone is (or their ideas are) an existential threat, eventually someone is going to be the right level of scared + unstable that causes them to kill people to try to defend their way of life. If you…

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Re: Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah

#417
post #8

Am I wrong in thinking this guy isn't/wasn't a very influential person, outside of Twitter and the people that stay on there 24/7? If so, why even target the poor guy? What change was the person who shot him hoping to elicit? Either way, I hope he makes it, even though it looks like it was a fatal blow

Southpark made fun of him in a recent episode. Heard the name assumed he was a yet another alt right influencer podcaster.

Re: Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah

#419
Never really followed this guy and only knew of him because he'd randomly be mentioned in news stories.

Regardless of your political bent, this sort of shit is sickening and genuinely disturbing, particularly when it occurs at (as this did) at a university whose ostensible raison d'etre is to ventilate different ideas, offensive or not. I realise this event wasn't a 'debate' per se but nevertheless it's the ethos and optics that matter.

There's also the incredibly myopic immaturity inherent in using violence for the sole or primary purpose of silencing the speaker and signalling to others that violence is somehow an acceptable form of dialogue. The myopic absurdity of this is of course that it is a cycle that can never end if all participants share that view, ensuring that it is inevitably self-defeating. Violence can make sense under certain circumstances - coups, revolutions, wars - but in the context of mere rhetoric it's abhorrent to witness.

Just a grotesque reflection in a long list of them that we as a species, or very many of us - perhaps more than we want to admit - are extremely violent and brutal.

Sickening and sobering, and again you could plug in any speaker/polemicist from whichever part of the political spectrum in here and it would be no less true.

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