Did Charlie Kirk say it is acceptable for people to die so we can have guns? Of course not. He actually gave a highly reasonable speech on the necessity of the right to keep and bear arms.
We have seen an insane number of people commenting that it is perfectly fine and even wonderful that Charlie Kirk was assassinated because he justified gun violence. First of all, it is not right to laugh and dance about the murder of a young father in any case, but especially not in this case, when leftists are as usual grossly misrepresenting what he said.
Instead of looking at some of the lies about Charlie — I think we have all seen enough ugliness this week to last us our lifetimes — I want to highlight his argument. And it is worth noting that Europe is experiencing an explosion of violent crime, and Europe has very strict gun laws. The only thing banning guns does is ensure that only the bad people and the evil government officials have weapons (as Thomas Jefferson noted).
Kirk called himself “a big Second Amendment fan” and cleared up some misconceptions: “The Second Amendment is not about hunting. I love hunting. The Second Amendment is not even about personal defense. That is important. The Second Amendment is there, God forbid, so that you can defend yourself against a tyrannical government.”
Kirk continued, “If that talk scares you — ‘wow, that's radical, Charlie, I don't know about that’ — well then, you have not really read any of the literature of our Founding Fathers.” As Noah Webster put it, “The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed.”
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Kirk also advised critics of gun rights to read some 20th century history. He discussed the fantasy of assuming taking guns away from law abiding citizens would solve gun crime (see shootings in gun-controlled Chicago), suggesting such people are in “alternative universe” and "just don't want to face reality that governments tend to get tyrannical and that if people need an ability to protect themselves and their communities and their families.”
Then, Kirk addressed the fact that “having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty. Driving comes with a price. [Almost] 50,000 …people die on the road every year. That's a price. You get rid of driving, you'd have 50,000 less auto fatalities. But we have decided that the benefit of driving — speed, accessibility, mobility, having products, services — is worth the cost of 50,000 people dying on the road.”
He was not, of course, saying that these lives don’t matter; he was simply noting that every aspect of our life is a risk-benefit analysis. Before we had cars, people died in horse-riding accidents, and before we had guns, people were stabbed and beaten to death. Many, like Iryna Zarutska, still are. The problem lies in human sin, not in the tools used. We don’t say that a Honda Civic killed a man or that a knife was responsible for cutting someone’s finger off. These are mere tools or machines. And it is also important to note that cars, for instance, save lives, as we can now rush people to the hospital faster than ever before. So do guns. The majority of mass shootings occur in gun-free zones.
So, as Kirk said, “we need to be very clear that you're not going to get gun deaths to zero. It will not happen. You could significantly reduce them through having more fathers in the home, by having more armed guards in front of schools. We should have a honest and clear reductionist view of gun violence, but we should not have a utopian one.” He ended:
You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won't have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It's drivel. But I am … I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe.
So then, how do you reduce? Very simple. People say, oh, Charlie, how do you stop school shootings? I don't know. How did we stop shootings at baseball games? Because we have armed guards outside of baseball games. That's why. How did we stop all the shootings at airports? We have armed guards outside of airports. How do we stop all the shootings at banks? We have armed guards outside of banks. How did we stop all the shootings at gun shows? Notice there's not a lot of mass shootings at gun shows, there's all these guns. Because everyone's armed. If our money and our sporting events and our airplanes have armed guards, why don't our children?
In fact, 94% of mass shootings occur in gun-free zones.
Democrats release serial criminals over and over and import foreign criminals across our borders. They do not object to violence and killing, and they encourage their own supporters to be violent. What they object to is having a population armed against encroaching tyranny. Charlie Kirk did not deserve to die because he thought we should be able to defend ourselves. He deserved to live and work for years to come as he, unlike the leftists lying about him, was willing to face uncomfortable truths head on. Rest in peace, Charlie.
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