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We can try to imagine a reversal of the scenario. If a pro-immigrant pundit were slain by an illegal immigrant, would conservatives make callous remarks on social media? I think so, yes. I don’t think they would “celebrate” it, but they would definitely make brusque political comments online. I recall reading comments like that after the Mollie Tibbetts story (illegal immigrant killed progressive American girl). We can’t say that it’s different because one side is objectively wrong about things, because polite politics requires that we pretend / believe that this isn’t the case.
But Charlie Kirk’s death is also unusually significant. He was a household name for anyone tuned in to youth politics. He was being groomed for leadership in the conservative movement, so it’s the equivalent of killing a political candidate (you can’t replace someone like Charlie Kirk). His death was unusually public in our uncensored social media environment, and also wildly gruesome. And his show was a symbol of open political discussion, even if only at the surface level. So there’s a sense in which Charlie Kirk’s death is more of an apolitical public tragedy. There’s the political dimension to it, but there’s also the apolitical tragedy dimension. As both parties would be happy to fire anyone who made light of the Boston Marathon Bombing after it happened, it comes down to how Kirk’s assassination ranks up against other objectively sacrosanct public tragedies. I actually don’t like him but I would say it’s something of a sacrosanct public tragedy because of the aforementioned incidental memetic properties of the event.
Wildly gruesome even more so because he got assassinated while talking during a public event. I think only JFK's assassination comes to the same level of shock because JFK got assassinated in a public parade. Meanwhile, others in American history that were assassinated I can think of like MLK Jr, RFK, weren't assassinated in such a public manner.
I looked through the list of assassinations in the US and these are the only ones I could see that I think would qualify as deliberate assassinations in public venues with many on lookers
John F Kennedy on November 22, 1963 - Assassinated in a parade
Malcom X on February 21, 1965 - Shot in front of 400 before beginning his speech
James E Davis on July 23, 2003 - Politician, killed in front of the New York council and dozens of attendees
Alberta King on June 30, 1974 - Mother of MLK, shot while playing the organ during service
Dimebag Darrel on December 8, 2004 - Musician, shot by deranged fan during a performance
I'm sure there's some I missed since I picked this list based on the description on the table, but most assassinations, at least in the US don't take place during public events with many onlookers. Most happen at the victim's home, or it may be in public in a place like a hotel.
I honestly think if he was shot at his home, it wouldn't have been nearly as tragic. This was as public as you can get. It would've been in the same category as the assassination attempt on Trump, except Trump had the fortune to survive that one. I think after Trump having survived multiple assassination attempts, I began to think that assassinations won't actually happen, the attempted assassins are too incompetent, security will get better etc. Clearly, I deluded myself.
I've seen a lot of gore videos on the internet. Stuff with organs showing, beheadings, torture, etc. I had just seen footage of that Ukrainian girl being stabbed on the bus like a week ago. Watching the footage of Kirk being shot was the worst I ever felt. The location, the timing... I don't think anything I've seen compares.
Even without the public nature of the assassination, Kirk is the most significant political figure to be actually murdered (as opposed to just being shot at) since the Days of Rage. Part of the reason why the public response is so controversial is that a lot of people, particularly on the left, don't get why the MAGA right see Charlie Kirk as a much bigger deal than two state legislators and their spouses, and the MAGA right don't get why half the country is treating this like the murder of a controversial podcast bro.
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My guess is that part of it is that you can see the exact moment he's gone.
Most violent videos on the internet are much more vague - the focus shifts, it's partially censored, somebody gets stabbed a couple of times and "the one" wasn't clear, it's a door cam footage of a shooting at a distance, the person gets dumped in an ambulance and goes away and oh god how did they survive that???...
But no with him it's up close, good quality footage, an ugly wound, and clear that he's gone.
On. Then off.
That one moment is existentially hard and one of the big reasons for excess of substance use in healthcare workers.
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I don't have links handy but I recall a spate of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" type comments on Twitter after Ryan Carson's stabbing. Further back and less parallel to what you're getting at, there was that couple beheaded while bicycling through... Afghanistan? that got similar comments. People continuously point out the Paul Pelosi gay jokes, but I haven't come up with a similar example of the right celebrating in the Kirk, Trump, 10/7, etc way.
Good way to phrase it.
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...is "killed by an illegal immigrant" meant to mirror "killed by a gun" here?
…Of course. Charlie Kirk would still be alive today if America had strict gun control. There’s only a tiny chance that this terminally online dude would be able to acquire an illegal firearm in Utah, and still only a tiny chance that he would successfully assassinate him through some other means. The gun is a causal factor in his death, in the same way open borders is a causal factor in the illegal immigrant example. In both cases, the victim reasonably believes that policy decision effects a greater good which supersedes the risks and harms.
I of course totally disagree that we should care about illegal immigrants and pretty much agree that we should have guns, but that’s opinion.
Your argument is entirely bogus., and even @TIRM's refinement below cannot save it. Japan has extremely strict gun control, but it also has high social cohesion and a population sharing highly cohesive values. If half of Japan actually wanted to murder the other half, there is no reason to believe their gun control laws would prevent this.
Japan’s 1/1000th rate of gun crime is not invalidated by one outlying case of assassination. The assailant in question planned to kill a cult leader for 20 years, tried and failed to obtain a firearm, built his own firearm, then spent a year planning to kill Abe only because he supported said cult. This was a highly unusual event all around.
Japan's low rate of violence generally comes from a highly values-cohesive culture, among other things. Murdering people you consider evil is rare there, because most Japanese do not appear to consider most other japanese evil. When a japanese person did come to view some of his fellow citizens this way, bang, you got a gun murder, even when he had to make the gun himself.
I do not believe even the strictest gun control implemented in America would reduce our rate of political murder. People who want to kill each other will find a way to make it happen, and values-incoherent politics is exceptionally good at inducing the desire.
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The most plausible form of 'strict gun control' in the USA is one like in Latin America, where badly-written laws are sometimes enforced in major city centers- largely at the discretion of local police- but most people who want to own guns just own them illegally instead of bothering with paperwork requirements, regardless of their personal intentions. Criminal gangs already flagrantly violate gun control laws and the pro-gun-control party has no interest in cracking down on straw purchases or making firearms theft(the two most common avenues for criminals to evade gun control laws) a major priority for police.
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Japan or North Korea strict gun control maybe. Typical developed nation gun control no.
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In most countries with strict gun control, buying a .30-06 Mauser is as easy as being part of a gun club or holding a hunting license, sometimes easier than that. Bolt action rifles are old enough technology you can buy them through mail as antiques and barely even have to produce ID in some cases. And essentially everyone owns something like it in the countryside, for obvious reasons.
The gun control angle makes absolutely no sense and is completely retarded in this situation unless one is proposing to ban private ownership of firearms outright with no exceptions.
Came up in a different thread, but an urban college student is very unlikely to be allowed to buy a bolt-action rifle in the UK without being asked searching questions about why he needed it. He might have been able to manage anyway due to his family, but it wouldn't have been trivial:
https://www.themotte.org/post/3126/smallscale-question-sunday-for-september-7/363028?context=8#context
Utah isn't urban though -- hunting is probably ten minutes away from this guy's house.
Not sure that there's really comparable locations that have colleges in the UK, but I'd guess that a student living in Aberdeen or someplace would be able to get a stalking rifle?
St. Andrews is pretty rural I think.
My impression is that getting a rifle is more difficult, because it's easier to use as a weapon and also just easier to accidentally kill people if you don't watch where you're firing. Shotguns are much more common. He might be able to get one but it wouldn't be easy and he'd probably need notes from a stalking club or something.
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Yeah especially when Tyler's experience with and access to guns is all downstream of his family. He likely doesn't have the experience or awareness to pull this off if his family and upbringing wasn't like 98th percentile pro-gun
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I’m not a gun guy, but wasn’t the weapon used the kind of single shot deer hunting rifle a grandfather would use? IOW, the kind of firearm that would still be easily available in almost any plausible form of “strict gun control.
It’s one of the cheapest and most widely commercially available hunting rifles in the world. A single shot, bolt action hunting rifle.
The kind of firearm that is available even in countries with strict gun control.
The idea that gun control would have prevented this is nothing short of farcical.
It’s the firearm equivalent of like… a common chef’s knife. Or a two door sedan. A claw hammer. Or bleach. Or gasoline. All incredibly common things that can nevertheless be used by a determined attacker to kill someone.
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This is the key factor. Had he died in a car accident ,it would obviously be different. But OTOH, dancing on the graves is something of an American tradition and maybe even intrinsic to humanity, probably going back to the Revolutionary War. Or when Lincoln was shot, many confederates had the same feeling. https://www.vox.com/2015/4/15/8414239/abraham-lincoln-death
Minor nit. “Con” as a shortened form of confidence game or man didn’t appear in the vernacular until the late 1800s. Vox is probably wrong about that reading of the spelling.
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