Not Worth It

NOTE: This piece was originally published at our Substack newsletter A Public Witness.

“It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.”

That’s what conservative pundit and activist Charlie Kirk argued in 2023. I disagree. I don’t think it’s worth it. Kirk shouldn’t be dead. He shouldn’t have been shot to death while exercising his free speech rights to talk about mass shootings during an event at Utah Valley University yesterday (Sept. 10). His two young children shouldn’t be fatherless. His wife and other loved ones shouldn’t have their lives wrecked by this violence. Not worth it.

The two children of Melissa and Mark Hortman shouldn’t be orphans after their parents were assassinated in June as Melissa was among Democratic lawmakers targeted by a conservative, anti-abortion man connected to the New Apostolic Reformation movement that Kirk at least partially embraced. Not worth it.

David Rose, a police officer guarding the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, shouldn’t be dead because a man fired more than 180 shots at the building to protest COVID-19 vaccines (after Kirk and others spent years pushing anti-vax politics). Not worth it.

Multiple students shouldn’t have been shot in a Colorado high school yesterday (Sept. 10) close to the same time as the killing of Kirk. Not worth it.

And two young children, Harper and Fletcher, shouldn’t have been killed during a Catholic Mass last week while attending their school in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Not worth it.

The more than 300 people killed and more than 1,350 people injured in mass shootings in the U.S. just so far this year shouldn’t have been subjected to such violence. Not worth it.

To think all of the deaths to gun violence can be shrugged off as insignificant collateral damage suggests a broken morality. A misguided ethic that rejects empathy for the victims and their loved ones. Like when Kirk declared in 2022, “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage.” Maybe that’s why he said a “patriot” should bail out the man who brutally attacked then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband in their home while looking for her. Not worth it.

Such a misguided morality also ends up remodeling Jesus into a gun enthusiast. Like when Kirk brought Kyle Rittenhouse on stage to prop up as a hero for killing two people and wounding another at a Black Lives Matter demonstration. After Rittenhouse was acquitted, Kirk featured the vigilante at a conference.

“We brought Kyle Rittenhouse to front stage. That’s a win,” Kirk claimed. “It’s a win for due process. A win for constitutional order. It’s a win for presumption of innocence — all biblical values, by the way. Plenty of people were wrongfully accused all throughout the Bible, especially the Old Testament, including Jesus Christ himself.”

Kirk apparently thought the answer to the question “What Would Jesus Do?” was travel across state lines with an AR-15 to gun down protesters. Not worth it.

Charlie Kirk speaks at a Turning Point USA event that featured J.D. Vance at Generation Church in Mesa, Arizona, on Sept. 4, 2024. (Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press)

In life and in death, Kirk represented the worst of American politics. He stoked dangerous conspiracies, attempted to silence voices he disagreed with, and utilized violent rhetoric mixed with a godly veneer. Then, someone decided to respond with evil by picking up a gun to silence a life.

While Kirk refused to give empathy to Paul Pelosi or the numerous victims of senseless gun violence, many people who were targets of his political attacks gave it to him and his family in the hours after yesterday’s horrible shooting. Democratic politicians — some of whom were endangered by the deadly 2021 insurrection at the Capitol that Kirk cheered on with violent rhetoric — put out statements of condolences and strong condemnations of political violence. And many college professors — who Kirk’s organization targeted on websites to squash their free speech rights — issued similar rejections of violence and expressions of concern.

While there are, like after any tragedy, some people cheering the outcome, the prominent voices have been condemning it. Unlike what we’ve seen in past cases, like when Donald Trump repeatedly mocked Paul Pelosi for being attacked or when Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah advanced conspiracy theories about the shooting of Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota to falsely blame the violence on liberals. (And since we don’t yet know who killed Kirk, anyone telling you why he was targeted is adding to the problem.)

We should condemn all violence, not just when it’s against those we like. All who suffer deserve empathy as everyone is created in the image of God. Losing sight of our shared humanity is not worth it.

We need less hate in our public discourse and an abandonment of the win-at-all-costs mentality. Voices across the political continuum have been part of the problem — and, sadly, much of the violent and hateful rhetoric has been mixed in with references to God and quotations from the Bible. But we need more than just a recommitment to avoiding violent rhetoric and demonizing those with different politics. We need a recognition that the guns are not worth it.

The inability to tackle the real problem is literally killing us. There’s simply no other high-income nation that sees anywhere near as many gun deaths as the United States. Consider the difference with the United Kingdom. The U.S. has five times as many people but 692 times more gun homicides per year. And just so we’re absolutely clear, the U.K. doesn’t have more prayer than the United States. Largely secular nations across Europe have gun rates similar to the U.K.’s. So if they don’t have more prayer (in schools or even their empty cathedrals), then why the difference?

Guns.

We have many, many more guns than are found in other nations. There are literally more civilian-owned guns than people in the United States. The second-place nation is the warzone of Yemen (and even then, the U.S. has more than twice as many guns per resident). It turns out that loose gun control laws and an abundance of guns are directly correlated with lots of mass shootings.

It’s simply not worth it. We should vote against any politician or not trust any pundit who says it is worth it. We don’t have to live like this. We don’t have to subject our kids to gun violence at their schools, at their college campuses, at their churches, at concerts, at parades, at movie theaters, at restaurants, at grocery stores, and pretty much any other place. Not worth it.

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor