Kirk's murder needs to be a turning point on security theater and Second Amendment extremism.

One of the quotes people went to first yesterday after Charlie Kirk was murdered was [his line about "some gun deaths" being worth it every year](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk-quotes-beliefs) as a trade-off for having second amendment protections. It's anti-intellectualism; he'd just use nihilism to provoke and "win a debate," but it's all part of the broader security theater stuff people do with guns. I just can't help but think Kirk's murder completely shatters that belief and is the time to point out what a failure it is.

Kirk's death is sad and pitiful, not martyrdom or some grand point that reinforces the pro-gun perspective. No gun death victim is. If you put "life saved" on one side of the scale and "life destroyed" on the other, our gun culture would absolutely hit the latter. The laws and access surrounding powerful guns only creates unbearable and unrelenting heartache. *Nothing good has come from this, and nothing will.* That's not to mock him at all, that's just to state the bleak truth about his murder and how his belief played out in the real world.

This needs to be a moment where we don't wait to talk about gun safety. Call it "politicization," but my belief is that we should live in a country where we're free from random acts of gun violence. This isn't a "no hunting" or "no concealed carry despite your abusive ex" stance, or even a "no ak-47 to hunt 30-50 feral hogs." Folks like that farmer *should* get major weapons to defeat wild hogs! But only people like that--the tiniest sliver of folks who have a need-based use--should have access, and I think they should surrender them upon completion. Banning assault rifles should be a minimum; I think we also need to push back significantly on open carry and other gun expressions. Stuff like open carry while standing in line at Culver's has to end; it adds no safety and looks absurd. We need to get much closer in line to other parts of the world when it comes to gun culture.

I just don't see any other way but to say that Kirk's murder completely destroyed that belief system. A lot of folks knew how grim and foolish it was, but now the whole world has seen the tragic consequence of that theory put into action. We can't keep going the same direction if we want anything to get better--we have to start getting guns off store shelves, exchanged for cash in buyback programs, and out of the public eye much in the same way that we did with smoking. Making a better America will involve speaking out more against guns and more in favor of restricting them.