A year ago today, Charlie Kirk was gunned down for the offense of showing up at a college campus to express his views.
The assassination of the MAGA activist, podcaster, and organizer who galvanized a generation of young conservatives was a shocking crime. Most fundamentally, it ripped a 31-year-old husband and father away from his wife and young children. It was also a heinous act of political violence, answering Kirk’s speech with a bullet from a .30-06-caliber Mauser Model 98 bolt-action rifle.
One of the foundations of our republic is the idea that citizens can have passionate but civil disagreements with one another, and then settle their differences by voting and engaging in other expressions of representative democracy. Kirk was an exemplar of this principle, touring college campuses to make his case for his ideas and for Christianity, and to debate all comers.
He built the activist group he led, Turning Point USA, from nothing into a powerhouse that played a large role in driving youth turnout for President Trump in the 2024 election.
One would have expected Kirk’s murder to be a galvanizing event on the right, and that was the initial reaction, before it created fractures in the MAGA coalition. This is a testament to how much work he was doing to unify various factions of the movement but also speaks to the premium the new media puts on conspiracy theories and attention-seeking internecine battles. Candace Owens has been the worst offender, but Tucker Carlson, who spends most of his time barking at the moon, has joined her. According to the various theories, his assassination might have been the work of the Israeli Mossad — or even his grieving widow Erika Kirk.
As I noted when prosecutors showed evidence during the preliminary hearing, this is an open-and-shut murder case. The suspect, left-winger Tyler Robinson, had a motive (hatred for Kirk and his views) and left a trail of damning evidence. Among other things, there is video of him on campus, the gun that was used was traced back to him, and he confessed multiple times to his roommate in both a letter and private messages. I hope that the trial will deliver justice as well as help clear the public record.
