It is no coincidence that Charlie Kirk was shot in cold blood while speaking at a campus to young people, wearing a T-shirt with the word Freedom written across it. We do not know the identity of the person who shot and killed Mr Kirk, but we know he murdered him with a sniper’s bullet, like a coward, because Mr Kirk debated with young people and loved freedom.
Mr Kirk used the age-old art of democratic debate, oratory and political persuasion to convince people that his view of the world was more coherent and moral than others. He was a Christian conservative who loved freedom. That’s why he was assassinated.
The Utah Valley University event was meant to be the first appearance on a 15-stop tour around the US, during which Mr Kirk had previously asked students and guests to “prove me wrong” in debate-style events. The killer who disagreed so profoundly with Mr Kirk could have just gone to one of the 15-stop tours and argued with him and ‘proved him wrong.’ But that’s not what happened. He murdered Mr Kirk instead. That’s what some people do.
This is an outrageous attack on anyone who debates or attends debates on any campus on the west. Every single head of every single debating society should understand this is an attack on them and the very idea of civilised debate and free speech. I’ve been debating since secondary school. I don’t intend to stop now.
Charlie Kirk addressed the Oxford Union a few months ago:
This was a political assassination, and it is a terrible coincidence that it comes when Robert Kennedy Jr is a part of the Trump administration. His father Democratic Senator Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a Palestinian-Jordanian man. In 1989, Sirhan told British journalist David Frost: “My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 fighter jets to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians.”
In 1963 Robert Kennedy Jr’s uncle John F Kennedy was assassinated by a communist Lee Harvey Oswald.
As my editor explains at Gript, “we have a problem in the modern west. That problem is that a large swathe of the political left has stopped consenting to defeat. It views its opponents as not merely wrong, but illegitimate.
Charlie Kirk was murdered, about an hour ago (as I write this), because too many of his opponents thought his politics were illegitimate. Not only that he was wrong, but that he should not be permitted to say what he thought. That his very arguments – on everything from gun control to abortion to the middle east to tariffs and trade – should not be heard, in case people might agree with them.”
Charlie Kirk was a man of faith, family and flag. He loved America. He was a Christian with a deep respect for Judaism. He has been stolen from his wife, Erica Kirk, a former Miss Arizona and their two children, a daughter, aged three, and a one-year-old son.
The following might seem obvious but necessary. Because we are now saturated with violence, it can be difficult to understand the horror of such events; you can become immune to it. Yesterday I watched the entire video of Iryna Zarutska being stabbed on a train and dying slumped on the floor. It was chilling. This morning I watched a sniper’s bullet take the life of Charlie Kirk.
To lose someone you love to an illness or an accident is bad enough. But to lose someone to a violent act is of a different order. Erica Kirk was at the event where her husband was murdered, we can only hope she did not see him being shot. Jackie Kennedy was looking directly at JFK for the fatal shot, having turned her head after the first one. Jackie Kennedy suffered serious PTSD afterwards as well as instantly losing her husband, the father of her two young children and her home.
This was not just the assassination of one man, this was an attack on his family, his two young children and the ideas that Charlie Kirk wanted to advocate: freedom and conservatism.
Michael Knowles at the Daily Wire said this:
“Discerning observers believed in Charlie Kirk, not chiefly for his accolades or his appearance, but for his manifest virtue. Charlie’s prudence, the principal virtue in politics, built a generational coalition that helped to transform the American government. His temperance distinguished him as one of the few on the Right to eschew whisky, cigars, and every other delight that might have distracted him from his purpose, for which he had so little time. His sense of justice produced clarity in moral vision and grace for his opponents. His fortitude impelled him to enter the public square without a hint of servile fear.
Charlie’s only fear was the holy sort—awe and wonder, the beginning of wisdom—and his clearest virtues were theological: faith, hope, and charity. We mourn his death, we take up his cause, and we entrust him, as he confidently entrusted himself, to God’s care.”
Ben Shapiro said:
“Charlie was a good man, a man who believed in right and wrong, who stood by his Biblical values. All of us will miss him, and I can’t imagine the pain of his beautiful young family, and we must all pray for them. And we must pick up the baton where Charlie left it, fighting for the things he believed in so passionately.”
Erika Kirk tweeted, before the monstrous attack on her husband, a prayer from Psalm 46:1. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
Pray for Erika Kirk and her two children.
Charlie Kirk 1993 – 2025
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.
May his soul and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
Laura Perrins is a conservative commentator and former barrister. Please subscribe to her Substack.
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(Photograph: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
We really are living in very troubling times. RIP Charlie Kirk.
Jake,
That must rank as the understatement of the century. And here’s another one – I agree with you wholeheartedly!
I’ll risk the ire and insensitivity accusations of fellow TNC readers, but am I alone in never having heard of this man before his assassination?
That’s a shame – I would urge you to search for his videos on YouTube. He was a great communicator and encouraged the young people in his audience to “prove me wrong”. Michael Knowles is another young man who similarly answered questions from audiences on various “controversial” (these days) topics. Charlie had a great gift to be able to deal with disagreements using facts and good humour. I love his videos.
The reason you have never heard of him is probably because he was not, in fact controversial. He was a decent man trying to make connections with people who disagreed with him, in order to stop the path to violence – always a danger when strong feelings are involved. He said this when he was questioned as to why he did the debates on college campuses. Always polite and courteous, he never shouted, swore or denigrated the people he was debating.
The ongoing savage attacks on free speech, freedom of thought, prayer etc, were chilling enough before the murder of Charlie Kirk but this, reduced by one UK newspaper to “an incident” and “a tragic event” (slightly paraphrasing), is uniquely terrifying. As one Fox News contributor said, if this can happen to Charlie, it can happen to any of us. Expressing an opinion, even for those of us not active publicly, has become highly dangerous. Just ask the man arrested the other day for causing “alarm and distress” to someone whom he called “a muppet”. You really can’t make this stuff up.
As Charlie regularly pointed out, what are now ironically termed “right” wing, beliefs have been held as true (“right”) for centuries. He was not saying anything controversial or ridiculous but merely stating facts, scientific, spiritual, religious and moral, correcting the major errors about being human, being moral, which have now permeated western society. Moral chaos is everywhere, and Charlie brought clarity of thought to his discussions with the young about contemporary issues.
I found it very interesting to read that Charlie was one of the few to “eschew whisky, cigars, and every other delight that might have distracted him from his purpose.” He may have been “one of the few on the Right” but, it seems, more and more young people are rejecting the drinking culture. They’ve watched what it has done and is doing to the older generation and they don’t like what they see, so it is good to know that Charlie, too, kept clear of that distraction.
That Charlie was unafraid of displaying his Christian faith is also evidence of his strength of character and spiritual depth. In one recent talk, he queried why his fellow evangelical Christians did not honour Mary, given that she is in Scriptures (words to that effect). Given that the famous Hail Mary prayer concludes with a plea for her intercession “now and at the hour of our death”, I think we all have every reason to hope that Charlie is spiritually safe and that for all eternity. May he rest in peace. And may Our Lady, Comforter of the Afflicted, console Charlie’s lovely wife and family.
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