Is There Any Message In The Charlie Kirk Assassination?
By
Leonard Zwelling
When I was 15, and President Kennedy was assassinated, there were no live internet pictures of what happened. Then we learned there were movies, the Zapruder film. The still images were purchased and published by Life Magazine. It was years before we actually saw the movie footage of the bullets entering the President’s neck and head in slow motion thanks to Oliver Stone. Stone’s theory that he depicted in his Academy Award winning (cinematography and editing) 1991 film JFK of multiple gunmen and CIA plots has never been substantiated. Furthermore, a simple visit to the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas and a look out the window to Dealey Plaza will convince anyone that the fatal shots were not difficult and a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, could have done it.
On Wednesday, September 10, the assassination of Charlie Kirk in Utah left no doubts about what happened. The live video was streamed all over the internet. My son sent it to me within minutes after it happened. I texted him back. “He’s dead.” A few minutes later that clinical assessment by a retired internist proved true.
Have we learned anything over the ensuing 62 years between these two murders in the public setting?
The easy, first answer is that we certainly have learned nothing about stopping the indiscriminate use of firearms. But in both the case of President Kennedy and the case of Charlie Kirk, these were not handgun attacks up-close or assault weapons massacres. I have seen the shots that Oswald would have had to make from the site of the attack. They were easy shots, even with his mail order rifle. With today’s rifle and sight technology, I expect the same will be said of the single shot on Kirk. Upon seeing the video, I immediately was convinced this was a rifle shot, not a hand gun. It was a massive, non-survivable wound akin to one on a battlefield. It will be quite hard to ever ban the weapons used in either the 1963 or 2025 attack. Both may also be used for hunting.
Second, does every political speaker need Secret Service protection? The answer here is that neither in Butler, Pennsylvania last summer, nor in Utah yesterday, would that have helped unless every rooftop for miles around is cleared. Of course, that is exactly what happens down Pennsylvania Avenue for the Inaugural Parade, but Kirk was not even an elected official. Why take a shot at him? I suspect we will eventually learn. He was, after all, very partisan, controversial, and confrontational. He wanted to get young people engaged and thinking. That’s a worthy goal. Some of his views were extreme and I could never condone, but he’s entitled to them.
Third, my guess is that when and if they catch the latest shooter, he will either be a professional hitman (if so, he’s probably in Mexico by now) or another mentally disturbed male like the many who choose to shoot up schools. Obviously, we have a mental health crisis in this country and when you combine that with the seemingly lax laws preventing the disturbed from acquiring weapons, we get all this bloodshed.
Finally, every news outlet I have heard or read has listed this latest attack as politically motivated. I’d go easy on that until we know more. We do not know whether or not this might have been personal. However, the likelihood is that something Charlie Kirk said or supported in his role as a conservative lightening rod triggered someone to shoot him and this shooter was more accurate than the one in Butler.
Those who believe that it is only from the right that violence occurs (e.g., January 6) better rethink that theory. I cannot imagine a conservative zealot taking a shot at Charlie Kirk. If it turns out that the shooter is caught alive and we find out he has a leftist streak, we can conclude that violence can come from either side of the political spectrum.
What I cannot answer is why anyone believes that violence is the answer to political differences. Then I remember that this country was born of violence against an oppressive monarch. Ninety years later we went to war with each other over the right of one person to own another. We have had many disagreements since. And a ton of gun violence. We always “hope and pray” that we can settle our disagreements without violence, yet our politics grow ever coarser and our elected representatives more extreme. They couldn’t even agree in Congress how to pray for Charlie Kirk after the shooting.
What might help is if the President of the United States eschewed language that revs up his base, calls his opponents monsters, and pardons those convicted of violent crimes. That is not going to happen so I think it is safe to expect that Charlie Kirk will not be the last political operative to die violently. After all, President Trump almost fell victim himself. This has now become the new normal in America. Guns, blood, and death the price of political involvement.
We seem to have learned nothing.
