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Editors’ Note: Although the author has written an accurate description of those committing political violence, there is little discussion of several major transformations in our society over the decades. America and the West have become increasingly secular with a breakdown in faith-based family life. Many of our youth are consequently nihilistic, magnified greatly by their addictions to the omnipresent and often sick social media with its focus on self. Public education was captured by the progressive left long ago and the subsequent breakdown in the quality of education and the indoctrinating and activist nature of our faculties at every stage of education are contributors to the civil discord and increasing violence. The horrific consequences of a more recent government Covid ‘justified’ shutdown of our society have undoubtedly played a role in recent years of the profound and violent breakdown in civil discourse and behavior.

Public murder tends to push existential questions to the forefront of people’s minds. It is so deeply malicious, so shockingly depraved, that it snatches away the sense of normalcy that sustains most people in the day-to-day. We are jolted into an awful awareness of civilization’s fragility. That’s terrifying, so we grasp frantically at solutions. What will it take to end the malice, restore normalcy, preserve civilization from the lunatics and monsters? We’ve been having a lot of those conversations of late.

Charlie Kirk’s murder was a terrible thing. It’s obvious, but still healthy to keep repeating it, affirming the visceral outrage. Oddly, it is partly because so many people have echoed this obvious-but-crucial sentiment that the ensuing conversation has in some respects been unusually uplifting, even despite the depraved minority that openly celebrated his death. More than usual, in the aftermath of a tragedy, there is a palpable willingness to discuss the deeper cultural maladies that spawn such malevolence. Some even seem to feel chastened. 

It’s interesting to consider the reasons. Usually, public shootings send the political left racing to their mental safe space: gun control. There must be a way to dramatically reduce violent death through gun-related legislation. Although the overwhelming obstacles to this strategy (both constitutional and practical) have been explained again and again, a large share of the population still seems to believe that the magical lever marked “No More Guns” is out there somewhere, presumably heavily guarded by representatives of the NRA. In any case, that debate is familiar, and frightened people crave familiarity. By the time we’ve finished discussing the definition of “assault weapon,” examining data from Switzerland and Finland, and revisiting the 1996 Australia buyback program, the aura of horror has dissipated somewhat, and most people go back to their lives. It’s not a fitting way to honor slain innocents, but then, these are not decorous times.

Kirk’s killing was different. In its aftermath, the gun debate has been comparatively muted, more of an undertone to a significant public discussion of political violence, radicalization, and the value of civil discourse. It could be relevant that Kirk was murdered with a bolt-action rifle (clearly not an assault weapon by anyone’s standards). It’s almost certainly true that the awfulness of the people who cheered Kirk’s murder as a case of “poetic justice for gun nuts,” deterred the humane and decent from even approaching the subject. But give Kirk credit. The main difference-maker was truly the man himself. In a time when most people slide into comfortable bubbles of the like-minded, he made it his life’s work to engage the not-like-minded in civil debate. It was his passion. Then one of them murdered him.

At such a moment, one does not object to endless iterations of the same obvious message. It’s good that so many influencers converged on this point, condemning the killing, begging for decency and restraint, and reminding all Americans that violence isn’t the answer. I agree. But I do have a follow-up. What’s the question?

Political violence is terrible, for reasons that have been articulated so well over the past several days. It attacks not just a particular victim, but also society at large, undercutting the very conditions that make it possible for people to live together. In this sense, Kirk’s assassination seems like a quintessential example of political violence. He was literally killed by an angry detractor who wanted to silence him. And there have been other public murders in recent months that likewise seem “political” in an obvious sense. Elias Rodriguez killed Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim “for Gaza”; his victims were presumably selected because they were Jewish. Vance Luther Boelter appears to have murdered Minnesota’s House Speaker Melissa Hortman for the crime of being a Democrat. Luigi Mangioni killed a corporate CEO because he was enraged about the state of insurance and healthcare. Thomas Matthew Crooks had almost no political profile until he shot a presidential candidate at a campaign rally, but if that’s not “political violence,” what is? Truly, all those murders seem clearly “political” in the sense that the killers’ worldviews were deeply shaped by political paradigms. They themselves would undoubtedly explain their motives in political terms. 

Nevertheless, there is another sense in which these killings are very much atypical of what we might, in other contexts, understand “political violence” to be. In some eras, people would assume that “political violence” is committed in the service of a political cause or end. The end could be sympathetic or not, of course, and the violence itself may or may not be an effective mechanism for reaching it. Most of us could probably find at least some sympathetic strands in the rhetoric of the IRA, while the Weather Underground were basically radical communists out for blood. Both, though, had some notion of where they wanted to go. The efficacy of different strategies is likewise variable: Religious fundamentalists presumably factor supernatural help into their broader narrative, while others, like ecoterrorists or anarchists, may see the collapse of civil society itself as a step towards the desired end. But they all seem to have some sort of manifesto or creed. All had some idea (even if deranged and utopian) of what they hoped to achieve. Did Thomas Matthew Crooks have that? Did Tyler Robinson?

Looked at from a certain angle, the space between Robinson (a top high school student from a good family), or Boelter (a successful middle-aged professional), and more obviously-unstable assassins like Robert Westman or Decarlos Brown Jr., doesn’t necessarily look so large. Nor do these figures look particularly “political,” at least not in the way that IRA terrorists or Weather Underground members would. Several of them seem to have killed for very recently acquired beliefs. Their own friends or nearest relations are quoted saying, in shocked confusion, “I have no idea why he did this.” These are not men of purpose and conviction. They are alienated misfits, and everyone knows it.

I think everyone does really know, even the ghastly cheer squads that pop up online after each atrocity. We’ve reached the point where we hardly probe a public killer’s motive in any depth; we only look for the source of derangement. We want to know what kind of household they grew up in, how they voted, how their parents voted, which rallies they attended, which websites they retweeted. Once that’s been aired, most people are satisfied that that’s all there is to know. We don’t go looking for some deeper credo, or expect to uncover a cloak-and-dagger initiation into a secret brotherhood. These aren’t “brotherhood” sorts of people. The Feds tell us that a killer “probably acted alone,” and we nod and shrug, because what else would we expect? Our modern-day killers always seem to be alone.

Some time back, I had a conversation with one of my sons, who was asking me questions about what I remembered of the violent outbreaks of my own middle and high school years. Stacked up together, there were really a shocking number: the LA riots, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City, all the unrest surrounding the O. J. Simpson trials. In my junior year, my native Boulder was rocked by the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, and then I went off to college, and almost immediately, a school I used to rub shoulders with at debate tournaments was devastated by a horrific massacre. (Yes, that was Columbine High School.) My young life was scarred by appalling violence, apparently! My son commented on how “the world sure was crazy” back in my day, which prompted a grim laugh.

It’s a tiny bit comforting, perhaps, to be reminded of earlier periods when I had that “peering over into the abyss” feeling, and came through it. But there are still interesting contrasts. The events of my teen years prompted endless angst and speculation about shadowy connections, conspiracies, and underground networks of domestic terrorists. Could Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols really have acted alone? Were racist miscreants cooperating to frame O. J.? Vigilante groups, white nationalists, religious zealots, Black Panthers, ecoterrorists, and the like flitted through our dystopian nightmares. We had some sizzling conversations about them on the school bus.

Today’s killers already know violence isn’t the answer, at least not to a question a healthy person would ask. Their murders are more like malicious suicides.

Today we have Antifa, Proud Boys, conspiracies like QAnon, and so on, but these are not our main sources of terror. When someone bars a church door and starts murdering children at prayer, we hardly consider that he might be part of a terrorist group. He was alone. Obviously.

There’s no simple solution to this kind of violence. Gun laws certainly won’t fix it. Condemnations of political violence are good, but it’s hard to say how much impact they will have, given that today’s public assassins aren’t really looking for solutions. They already know violence isn’t the answer, at least not to a question a healthy person would ask. These murders are more like malicious suicides. The killers want to destroy themselves—and hurt others along the way. 

One thing at least we should resolve: First, do no harm. Hardly any of our present troubles can be effectively addressed through tighter state control. There is always a temptation demand this when people are angry and afraid, and the past few days have unsurprisingly seen many calls, from different corners, to crack down on this or that movement or ideological camp. The reasoning is obvious, but it’s a mistake. If alienated rage is the core problem, we can’t expect to fix it by shutting down dangerous ideas or disrupting ground-level associations. We need people to talk and associate more, not less; a loveless nihilist can be radicalized by a thousand different things, while meaningful activity and healthy human relationships are protective against all manner of ideological evils. Meanwhile, a quick glance at our British friends across the Atlantic should amply illustrate how things are likely to go when a society tries to turn down the temperature by getting tough on thoughtcrime. 

If we really want less violence, we need to renew our efforts to build up civil society, creating more common spaces where conversation can happen. Even more, we need to do better by our kids, perhaps especially our sons, who clearly need more direction, purpose, and community. This is not primarily a question for public policy; it has far more to do with the bedtime stories, the camping trips, and more broadly, making a higher priority of building the kinds of communities that are good for our kids. Communities shouldn’t just be outlets for our own projects and pet causes. It’s a big ask in a busy, breathless world, but we have to find a way.

“When you stop having a human connection with people you disagree with, it becomes a lot easier to want to commit violence against that group.” That was Charlie Kirk, in a clip widely circulated after his death. I personally had paid very little attention to him before his murder, but he certainly looks large in hindsight: firm, magnanimous, a man of conviction. His killer looks small, weak, pitiful. But that is the modern public killer.

We can hope, at least, that that stark contrast will inspire young men to imitate Kirk and not Robinson. If so, much good could flow from it. Kirk valued faith and family. He loved freedom. And he championed civil conversation, not just in rhetoric but in action. We should honor his memory by holding tighter to all of those things.

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This article was published by Law & Liberty and is reproduced with permission.