I cannot yet dance on Charlie Kirk’s grave
On cruelty for the sake of cruelty and on the absurdist prevailing interpretation of gun rights
See update for September 11, 2025, at end of post.
I want to begin by quoting Qasim Rashid on the assassination of Charlie Kirk at length:
“Why have empathy for those who show none?
“It gets even more difficult to have empathy when you recall that Kirk once sneered, ‘I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up new age term, and it does a lot of damage.’ Moreover he falsely claimed ‘guns save lives,’ and even argued it was ‘worth it’ for some people to die from gun violence every year just so the Second Amendment could exist. He dehumanized immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ people, Black people, Palestinians, women, and more.
“Why have empathy for those who show none?
“And yet, even as he refused to take seriously the epidemic in gun violence in America—which has created the annual atrocity in which guns are the leading cause of preventable death for American children—we saw another school shooting today. Today, while Kirk was the victim of gun violence at a university in Utah, at least four students, including the shooter, were injured in a school shooting at Evergreen High School in Colorado. Our nation has already suffered more than 300 mass shootings in 2025, and it’s only September.
“Why have empathy for those who show none?
“And finally, Kirk particularly detested Muslims and the religion of Islam. He constantly demonized Muslims, referring to us as “Mohammadens” in an attempt to berate and deny us our identity. So why would I, an American Muslim who gets plenty of hate from Kirk supporters due to the disinformation he fed them on Islam and Muslims, bother to have empathy?”[1]
Kirk was a pretty evil guy and I’ll confess that I feel little to no empathy for him or those he leaves behind. People die for his beliefs, whether they share those beliefs or not. People suffer his cruelty for the sake of cruelty for his bigotry and his rejection of empathy whether they share those beliefs or any other variation of them or not.
They will, of course, continue to die. And they will, of course, continue to suffer, because Kirk and Donald Trump rose to prominence on the back of all the sins that Rashid lists, not because they somehow persuaded bigots to be bigots, haters to be haters, bullies to be bullies, or gun nuts to be gun nuts.
I have been on the wrong side of only some of what Kirk and Trump preach and celebrate. Not even most of it. Not even, arguably, the worst of it. But enough that the pain I feel constrains my empathy to his victims.
As Rashid observes, Kirk thought it was “worth it” for some to die to preserve his precious and incorrectly alleged right to bear arms, and he has now personally paid the ultimate price for that value judgment. We can wonder, if he ever regained consciousness and was asked, what he would think of that argument now.
And I want to reprise an argument about this supposed “right to keep and bear arms” that I made previously on a site that is no longer online (and which is unlikely to return). In essence, I view the second amendment in the context of Article 1, Section 8, which grants to Congress the right “[t]o provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”[2] This sounds a lot like the National Guard. It does not sound like a bunch of idiots claiming they’ll defend the country from tyranny and then cheering it on now that it’s here.
Further, there are problems with a reading of the second amendment, “[a] well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,”[3] as an individual right. First, the phrase “well regulated” obviously seems to refer directly to the text in Article 1, Section 8. Second, the text refers not to individuals but to “the people” collectively, a usage also found in criminal cases titled as “the people” versus the defendant(s) and therefore would seem to allocate this right to the government as representative of the people. Third, the amendment allows for no upper limit, which in gun nuts’ preferred interpretation would seem to allow individuals to keep and bear even nuclear arms.
The gun nut interpretation is thus not merely laughable, not merely implausible, but far beyond ludicrous. And this is what Kirk wanted people to die for. It is what he died for.
One of my failings is that there are limits to my empathy. Rashid exceeds me here, turning to his faith for assistance.[4]Another is my intolerance for stupidity, particularly when that stupidity is willful and malicious.[5]
Rashid is even noble enough to write, “For those who feel no empathy for him, I get it. He inflicted harm on countless people, and none of us are light switches who can flip our feelings on and off at will. So if you have no empathy for Kirk, no judgement from me. None.”[6] Rashid is more magnanimous than I am, by quite a long shot.
Update, September 11, 2025: I’ve now seen a number of headlines decrying the rise of political violence in this country—the one article I’ve read was by Tara Palmeri, who eloquently concludes with the same warning.[7]
But let’s not forget who’s who in this political violence. The leadership of the Black Panthers suffered numerous assassinations, as did Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Disaffected right-wingers blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City; they have harassed and attacked abortion clinics, patients, and practitioners. And that’s just from memory. Indeed, there has been a lot of right-wing domestic terrorism—the January 6 coup attempt being only one example.[8]
Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump have motivated a lot of it. And Trump and his allies are still at it, threatening retribution against the “radical left,”[9] a category which includes anyone who disagrees with Trump on anything. If you don’t like political violence, it’s the right—not the left[10]—you have a problem with.
[1] Qasim Rashid, “Reflections on the Death of Charlie Kirk,” Let’s Discuss This, September 10, 2025, https://www.qasimrashid.com/p/reflections-on-the-death-of-charlie
[2] U.S. Const. art. 1, § 8, cl. 16.
[3] U.S. Const. amend. II.
[4] Qasim Rashid, “Reflections on the Death of Charlie Kirk,” Let’s Discuss This, September 10, 2025, https://www.qasimrashid.com/p/reflections-on-the-death-of-charlie
[5] David Benfell, “A Texas pediatrician deserves her job back,” Not Housebroken, July 10, 2025, https://www.disunitedstates.org/p/a-texas-pediatrician-deserves-her
[6] Qasim Rashid, “Reflections on the Death of Charlie Kirk,” Let’s Discuss This, September 10, 2025, https://www.qasimrashid.com/p/reflections-on-the-death-of-charlie
[7] Tara Palmeri, “The Complicated Legacy of Charlie Kirk,” Red Letter, September 11, 2025, https://www.tarapalmeri.com/p/the-complicated-legacy-of-charlie
[8] Public Broadcasting System News, “Far-right violence a growing threat and law enforcement’s top domestic terrorism concern,” September 5, 2023, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/far-right-violence-a-growing-threat-and-law-enforcements-top-domestic-terrorism-concern
[9] Susan B. Glasser, “Did Trump Just Declare War on the American Left?” New Yorker, September 11, 2025, https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/did-trump-just-declare-war-on-the-american-left; Ben Johansen, “Trump says ‘we have to beat the hell’ out of ‘radical left lunatics’ after Kirk killing,” Politico, September 11, 2025, https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/11/trump-says-we-have-to-beat-the-hell-out-of-radical-left-lunatics-after-kirk-killing-00559170
[10] Alex Nowrasteh, “Politically Motivated Violence is Rare in the United States, Laissez-Faire, Laissez-Passer w/ Alex Nowrasteh & David Bier, September 11, 2025, https://www.alexnowrasteh.com/p/politically-motivated-violence-is