On Wednesday, September 10, Charles “Charlie” Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University. Kirk (31) was a controversial political figure most well known for founding Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a far-right political activist organization intent on promoting conservative beliefs on college campuses. Kirk was on “The American Comeback Tour”, a series of visits to public fora and particularly college campuses to engage in public question and answer events with audience members.
Kirk was shot once through the neck while speaking about gun violence. He died sometime later in a hospital. Immediately before the shooting, an audience member had been questioning Kirk about the number of mass shootings (something he had historically downplayed) and the number of transgender mass shooters (something he had historically exaggerated). Kirk’s last question was to ask the audience member if they were including gang violence in mass shootings, though most organizations that study this issue (such as the Gun Violence Archive) do not distinguish between gang violence and mass shootings not related to gang activity.
In a statement streamed through the TPUSA YouTube channel, Kirk’s wife Erika Kirk said, “Charlie, I promise I will never let your legacy die, baby… I’ll promise I’ll make Turning Point USA the biggest thing that this nation has ever seen.” She promised that the current tour would continue, though it is yet unclear what the actual plans are for that. She also said that their annual “Americafest” conference and radio and podcast show would continue as normal, stating “in a world filled with chaos, doubt and uncertainty, my husband’s voice will remain and it will ring out louder and more clearly than ever, and his wisdom will endure.” She said that he would now “stand at his savior’s side wearing the glorious crowd of a martyr” and that “if you thought my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea… what you have just unleashed across the entire country.”
Additionally, politicians on all parts of the political spectrum have expressed sympathy. While promoting her memoir, Justice Amy Coney-Barrett called the increase in political violence “grotesque”, while Donald Trump ordered all flags to be flown at half-mast through September 14 in commemoration of his death. (As a reminder, Trump shortened the window of half-mast flags in honor of former president Jimmy Carter’s death to celebrate his own inauguration.) Reaction across social media has been mixed, with some seeing Kirk’s death as a declaration of war, while others have considered his death a form of karma, citing his views on gun violence. Many political commentators, particularly those on the left, have said that while they do not advocate violence, they don’t feel sympathy for him either.
22-year-old Tyler Robinson has been arrested and is being held without bail in conjunction with the shooting, with several potential felonies (including aggravated murder) under investigation. However, he has not yet been charged. Utah Attorney General Derek Brown has indicated the death penalty could be on the table if Robinson were to be convicted. According to authorities, Robinson’s roommate shared a series of Discord messages that included a request for the rifle matching the description of the suspected murder weapon to be picked up from a “drop point”. The social media messaging app is cooperating with authorities to turn over Robinson’s messages. There are disputed accounts of whether the casings had engravings on them. Robinson has no known criminal record or political affiliations. Several doctored images and other debunked claims (ranging from claims that Robinson was a trans socialist to images showing him wearing pro-Trump apparel to imply a false flag attack) have circulated on social media, making more information on his identity and background unreliable.
Kirk, a native of the Chicago suburbs of Arlington Heights and Prospect Heights, briefly attended Harper College, where he first founded TPUSA. He later dropped out to pursue political activism professionally. He also later formed affiliate groups Turning Point Action and Turning Point Faith (TPF). TPF has been active in mobilizing religious communities in support of conservative causes and Christian nationalism. TPUSA briefly had a chapter on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus. However, after incidents including doxxing and harassment, the organization was banned from campus.
Kirk’s views have been controversial for years. He has been particularly vocal in favor of gun rights and opposing all restrictions on guns, saying at a TPUSA event in 2023, “I think it’s worth it 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.” (A note: there is nowhere in the Bible any consideration of the right to guns as a God-given right, as those didn’t exist yet, so his use of the word “other” here is rewriting religious texts.) He has been a vocal opponent of queer rights, including promoting accusations that LGBTQ+ people, particularly trans women and drag queens, are pedophiles and groomers. He also has opposed the Civil Rights movement and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., although ironically, some conservative Christian online groups have been calling him a “modern MLK” across social media since his death. (This fundamentally misunderstands what both men stood for, but it is kind of funny that Kirk would be compared to someone he called “awful” and “not a good person.) He also vocally opposed all abortions, responding to a question in a Jubilee interview that even if he had a 10-year-old daughter who was raped and impregnated, he would expect her to carry to term. Kirk has also promoted Christian nationalism and considered himself a Christian nationalist. TPF has been particularly involved in its activism in this area.
Kirk was also a prominent conspiracy theorist. He has tweeted that the Great Replacement theory, a false belief that minority races and ethnicities are trying to breed white people out of existence, which started as an antisemitic conspiracy theory and is now much more generally racist, is real and not a theory. As part of this, he called for Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett’s district to be eliminated as part of Texas redistricting, saying that she was looking to “eliminate the white population in this country.” He considered “cultural Marxism”, an antisemitic and anti-intellectual conspiracy theory started by the actual, literal Nazis in Nazi Germany, to be a real social problem, particularly in colleges and universities. He promoted several false claims about George Floyd’s death, including that he died from an overdose, that the medical examiner was lying about the autopsy, and that Floyd held a gun to a pregnant woman’s stomach. He was particularly vocal with a slew of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, ranging from supporting hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment for COVID-19 (it isn’t), to calling on parents to protest school requirements for mask wearing, to saying that vaccine mandates were “medical apartheid”, to saying social distancing was a “Democratic plot against Christianity.”
Kirk was also accused of helping to coordinate and promote the attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021, at the US Capitol. He tweeted that “This historic event will likely be one of the largest and most consequential in American history… The team at @TrumpStudents & Turning Point Action are honored to help make this happen, sending 80+ buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president[.]” The tweet has since been deleted, but was already copied into many independent news sites and is available on the Wayback Machine. He promoted claims that former vice president Mike Pence could reject the results of the Electoral College and declare Trump the winner, something most constitutional scholars say would not be allowed. He was a major voice in claiming voter fraud both before and after the 2020 presidential election, including leading a “Stop the Steal” protest in Phoenix, Arizona.
Author’s note: This is a developing story, and this article was submitted for review on Saturday, September 13. More details may have been revealed by the time of publication. Additionally, while I have attempted to independently verify all statements referenced, some information may have been disproven, as there is a lot of misinformation surrounding this story, and a substantial time has passed between submission and publication. For a fuller view with up-to-date reporting, please consider looking to reporting by outlets such as AP News.