Shocking killing of Charlie Kirk heightens fears over nation’s path

By Niall Stanage

The Hill

A shot rang out in Utah on Wednesday, and in that moment the United States descended another steep step on a dark path.

The known facts are that conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot dead during a speaking engagement on the campus of Utah Valley University. Kirk was the CEO of Turning Point USA, a youth-oriented conservative organization he cofounded in 2012.

President Trump announced the news that Kirk had died in a social media post shortly after 4:30 p.m. EDT. Trump, describing Kirk as “Great and even Legendary,” added, “He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us.”

In the hours before Kirk’s death was confirmed, videos of the moment of the shooting circulated widely on social media. They were horrific.

Kirk, 31, had a wife and two young children.

A statement from the college said the shooting appears to have taken place from a distance of about 200 yards. As of late afternoon, there were conflicting reports as to whether anyone was in custody in the aftermath.

The murder was deeply shocking in itself. It also resonated outward, fueling broader circles of fear about the future of the United States — and about its deeply polarized present.

The nation is, by almost every measure, more divided than at any time in its recent history.

Not since the tumult of the late 1960s claimed the lives of major figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X has the nation been so riven by successive acts of political violence.

Instances where people are targeted on the apparent basis of their political affiliation proliferate.

The Kirk shooting comes 14 months after Trump himself, then a candidate, came within inches of being killed by a would-be assassin’s bullet in Butler, Pa. Trump faced another apparent attempt on his life just months later.

The lurch into political violence is not confined to any party or ideology.

In June, a Democratic state representative in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, was killed at her home. Her party colleague, state Sen. John Hoffman, was shot, apparently by the same attacker, nearby. Hortman’s husband Mark was also killed, and Hoffman’s wife Yvette was injured.

The storm clouds of political violence have been gathering for well more than a decade.

Then-Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shot and gravely wounded while meeting constituents in 2011. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) suffered serious injuries when a Republican baseball practice was targeted by a shooter in 2017.

In many such instances — add to them the 2020 plot to abduct Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) — there is often rancorous debate over exactly what the motivations were behind each attack, how political intent intersected with mental instability and delusion, and which party or ideological faction bears greater culpability for ratcheting up tensions in a larger sense.

But no one seriously disputes such tensions have grown more intense and dangerous.

By October last year, Reuters had catalogued at least 300 incidents of political violence since the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021.

That riot was surely the most infamous such incident in recent years, given how profoundly it threatened to damage the foundations of American democracy. About 140 law enforcement officers were injured by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the result of the 2020 election.

The enmity from which political violence sprouts has frighteningly wide roots, however.

Nearly half of the American electorate believes members of the opposing party are “downright evil” — not merely wrong in their views — according to a Johns Hopkins University survey released last October.

The previous year, 23 percent of Americans had agreed with the statement that things had gotten “so off track” that “American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”

Those findings come even as the nation also largely agrees that political violence is a serious problem: 73 percent of people agreed such a threat exists in an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released in July.

Meanwhile, the specter of political violence also seeps out beyond the contours of party partisanship.

Deep divisions over the conflict in Gaza have had deadly manifestations in the United States.

Two staff members of the Israeli Embassy in Washington were shot and killed in May. Three students of Palestinian descent were shot and injured in Vermont in late 2023. Just days after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy was murdered in Illinois by his mother’s Islamophobic landlord.

The older American hatreds rooted in race and religion have exploded with deadly consequences too: the 2018 antisemitic attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue; the 2019 mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart targeting Latinos; the 2023 racist attack that killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket.

By late Wednesday afternoon, public figures and commentators of all political persuasions were mourning Kirk’s death and lamenting the abyss upon which the nation appears to be teetering.

In addition to Trump, Vice President Vance reacted to news of Kirk’s death with a biblical phrase: “Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.”

Former President Biden wrote on social media, “There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones.”

Former Vice President Kamala Harris wrote, “Political violence has no place in America. I condemn this act, and we must all work together to ensure this does not lead to more violence.”

Even in a moment of tragedy, however, it is far from certain that words of reconciliation from any quarter can bind up the nation’s bitter fissures.

The fear is there might be more tremors yet to come.