admin
There are moments in our national life that make every decent American stop and recalibrate what matters: law, order, and the safety of those who speak their minds. On September 10, 2025, conservative leader Charlie Kirk was gunned down while exercising free speech on a college campus, an act so cold and calculating it stripped the veneer off the comforts many on the left cling to about safe campuses and tolerant discourse. The horror of that rooftop shot was witnessed by thousands and replayed across the country, leaving families and a movement to grieve and demand answers.
The facts are grim and straightforward: the shooting happened at Utah Valley University during a Turning Point USA event, and investigators later identified and charged a suspect in connection with the killing. This wasn’t a random act in a dark alley — it was an assassination-style attack in daylight at a public campus event, exposing glaring vulnerabilities in how these gatherings are policed and protected. Americans deserve transparency about how the shooter accessed a vantage point and an explanation for why common-sense precautions were absent.
When even prominent Hollywood liberals like Rob Reiner express “absolute horror” at footage of the killing, it proves that decency can transcend politics — but it shouldn’t be a rare exception. Reiner’s empathetic remarks about Erika Kirk’s forgiveness struck a chord precisely because too many in elite media reflexively weaponize tragedy for clicks and partisan advantage. Genuine grief is welcome, but hypocrisy from those who have amplified the rhetoric that radicalizes others cannot be ignored.
That hypocrisy mattered after the assassination, because the predictable snippets and tweets celebrating the death — and the partisan gymnastics by some commentators — showed how poisonous public discourse has become. Leaders on all sides must condemn this kind of dehumanization; yet too often the left’s media ecosystem rewards it, while accountability for those who cheer real violence is weak or nonexistent. The country can and must do better than turning a man’s murder into a political football.
The security failures at Utah Valley University are a scandal in their own right: no metal detectors, limited staffing, and no rooftop surveillance meant a speaker was left exposed in an environment where the risk was foreseeable. Universities once proud of promoting debate instead appear to have adopted negligence as policy, leaving conservative speakers and students vulnerable while expecting taxpayers and law enforcement to mop up the consequences. If institutions want to be forums of free speech, they have to accept responsibility for protecting that speech.
Justice must be swift and unflinching. Authorities moved to arrest the suspected shooter and prosecutors pursued the full weight of the law, and that kind of determination is what a grieving nation needs to see more often when political violence crosses the line into murder. Beyond one prosecution, Congress and state legislatures should examine the legal and security gaps that allowed such an attack to occur and consider commonsense reforms to keep public events safe without surrendering civil liberties.
For hardworking Americans watching this unfold, the takeaway is stark: our culture of contempt for opposing views is not an abstract problem — it kills. We must reclaim decency, demand that media and elites stop normalizing rage, and insist that public institutions protect citizens regardless of politics. If patriots of all stripes unite behind law, order, and free speech, we can honor Charlie Kirk’s memory by ensuring no other family endures what his did.
