Tried to balance gun deaths and gun rights, died by gunshot

If you pay any attention to the news you’ve already heard. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos reported that conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at a Utah college event. He was 31. This article goes into more detail than I would prefer. It does say that before the shot rang out Kirk, taking questions from the audience, was talking about mass shootings. He said that there had been “too many” mass shooters that had been transgender. Kirk was a darling of the conservative movement. At age 18 he founded Turning Point USA to better talk to college kids about conservative principles. One thing he did was challenge students to debate him – which I thought was a bit unfair because he was a decade older and had used that time to hone his conservative arguments. Few of the youth could keep up with that and the conservative debate style of conflating ideas. I feel for the students at this event, I hear there were about 3,000 of them, who watched Kirk be assassinated. Definitely traumatizing. Walter Einenkel of Kos gathered together many of the reactions to Kirk’s killing. It seems liberals condemned gun violence and conservatives blamed liberals. Alix Breeden of Kos reported that Speaker Mike Johnson asked the House for a moment of silence for Kirk and his family. Right after that Republicans started shouting at Democrats. Michel Martin and Steve Inskeep of NPR discussed why Kirk was so loved by conservatives. They included some of Kirk’s statements over the years. He had millions of followers on his social media platforms. He was praised for drawing young people to conservatism. Some young people liked that he said what they thought they couldn’t. Others saw his views offensive and hateful. Some of his views: He didn’t like that London has and New York likely will have Muslim mayors. He said transgender people are not real. He claimed Kamala Harris was vice president because she was the DEI candidate. And Kirk’s big quote that is getting a lot of repetition, considering how he died:

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.

I wonder what he thought his God-given rights are and why a gun is needed to protect them. NPR reporter Stephen Fowler said:

It is impossible to overstate the importance of Kirk to an entire generation of young conservatives, and to Republican politicians that benefited from those young conservatives showing up to vote. You could call him many things, an influencer, grassroots organizer, business executive, author, radio show host, an all-around avatar for politically active online and offline Gen Z Americans. When he was 18, just months before President Obama was reelected, he cofounded the group Turning Point USA as this sort of college campus free speech nonprofit.

Fowler added Kirk created Turning Point to “try and save Western civilization.” (From what, I ask.) Those debate he held, not just with students, became content for his media. I’m sure the purpose was see how I destroyed their flimsy arguments! Martin also spoke to Kyle Spencer, a journalist and author of the book, Raising Them Right: The Untold Story About America's Ultraconservative Youth Movement And Its Plot For Power. I’ll let you read it. Kos of Kos discussed the killing and the reaction to it.

If it were up to [progressives], gun violence wouldn’t only matter when conservative royalty is killed. It would also matter when Democratic legislators are murdered, and especially when schoolchildren are slaughtered. But it’s not just the guns. It’s the climate that President Donald Trump and his allies have built. Scholars call it “eliminationist rhetoric”: the idea that political opponents aren’t simply wrong, but evil, dangerous, and must be eradicated. It’s language that leaves no room for disagreement or coexistence, only destruction.

He then had an example of the recent eliminationist rhetoric, what conservatives have been saying since the shooting. Democracy has always been about disagreement. It’s messy and loud. But when one side decides disagreement is intolerable, bloodshed happens. See: Civil War.

Kirk’s family and his children didn’t deserve this. No child who loses a parent to gun violence deserves it. No parent who loses a child to it deserves it. And that is why liberal policies—like universal background checks and bans on weapons of war—would save lives. Maybe they even would have saved Kirk’s. But instead, the right is already escalating... So stop blaming liberals. We hate this shooting as much as conservatives do. The difference is we hate all the other shootings, too.

After Kirk’s death Gaslit Nation posted about it. I haven’t listened to the 20 minutes of audio, so don’t know the details of the argument. However, the printed introduction suggests that Kirk had called for the release of the Epstein files and his assassination was a way to shut him up. Since this was posted the killer has been caught (or turned himself in?), as was reported in the news. The killer is still alive (so many end up dead by police) so maybe he will say why he did it. In Thursday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Mike Cerulli that includes a joint statement by the Young Democrats of Connecticut and the Connecticut Young Republicans both condemning Kirk’s killing. I’m pleased to see this show of unity. Dworkin also quoted Steven Beschloss of America, America. I’m not quoting all that Dworkin did so I can leave out a description of the shooting.

But I’m also thinking about all the people in attendance for this public event and all those who watched the video: Political violence has many victims, including those who have the misfortune to witness it. This latest act of violence adds to the terrible trauma that pervades our society. I dread the ripple effects, even while we should all urge restraint rather than fanning the flames.

ABC News reported that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer forced a vote on the release of the Epstein files. It was as an amendment to a defense spending bill. The purpose was to get Republicans on record as for the release or as being part of the coverup. The amendment failed 51-49, which I believe is along party lines, with Republicans rejecting it. In the comments Jesse Duquette listed some of Kirk’s awful comments. I won’t list all of them. This is just a taste of how bad he was.

Black women do not have the processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot. I can’t stand the word “empathy.” I think empathy is a made-up new age term, and it does a lot of damage. LGBTQ is a social contagion. We need armed militias to prevent the diminishing and decreasing of white demographics.

Mark Sumner tweeted:

Everything about Charlie Kirk’s death deserves condemnation. Nothing about Charlie Kirk’s life deserves praise. Even the most egregious death does not elevate his insidious philosophy or hateful actions. That shouldn’t be difficult.

That sums it up for me quite well. In today’s roundup Dworkin quoted Cliff Schecter of BlueAmp

In the end, the way to stop this disease—that by numbers as high as 90% Americans support passing measures to end— is actually pretty easy. Because the two political parties have made it simple for us to do the math. One party post-Newtown, the Democratic Party, voted 97% in favor of key measures to stop this sick blight on our society. While the other, Republicans, voted 97% against these common sense reforms (yes, it really is this symmetrical). So to summarize: Vote every single f---ing cowardly, cruel, corrupt Republican out of office. And we’ll put a stop to this child-killing virus.

In the comments a meme posted by exlrrp shows Kirk and the words, “If guns make us so safe, why am I dead?” There are also a lot of cartoons and memes about Kirk’s comment that a few deaths are a rational trade to keep the Second Amendment. Another meme posted by exlrrp shows the introduction of an article (where it was published was not included):

Donald Trump hints at assassination of Hillary Clinton by gun rights supporters. Republican presidential nominee says ‘second amendment people’ could stop Democrat choosing undesirable supreme court justices if she is elected. David Smith, Wed 10 Aug 2016.

The meme continues:

By the way I can pinpoint the exact moment political violence began to be normalized again in the United States.

Now for something different, though this isn’t great. Lisa Needham of Kos reported that the nasty guy’s Food and Drug Administration sent letters to 100 pharmaceutical companies. The letters accuse them of misleading advertising to consumers and demanding compliance. These appear to be form letters and don’t say which ads and how they are misleading, which drugs are involved, and which regulations are being violated. Wrote Needham:

Trump’s attack has nothing to do with actual, genuine concerns about deceptive advertising. Rather, this is about forcing pharmaceutical companies to treat Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s conspiracy theories as if they were science. ... What these fact-free letters are really about is signaling to pharmaceutical companies that they are in for the same treatment as universities and media companies: vague, unsupported assertions of wrongdoing that can only be resolved by giving the administration millions of dollars. And that sure doesn’t look like science.

Needham also wrote about the state of the Internal Revenue service. The nasty guy’s team has made sure it works for only rich people. The Treasury Department is rolling back Biden era rules about prosecuting people and companies for using shady tax shelters. Also, the agency no longer has enough people to delve into the complex audits that rich people file. They can expect smooth sailing. For those who aren’t rich, taxpayer assistance has gotten much harder due to cuts in agents. Also, remaining employees are illegally sharing tax data with the Department of Homeland Security. Alix Breeden of Kos reported that a US District judge gave and order saying Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook can keep her job while the court case plays out. The case is the nasty guy is trying to fire her “for cause,” that she did something illegal on the job. The judge said the nasty guy offered no proof that she was “executing her duties unfaithfully or ineffectively.” What this is really about is the nasty guy wanting to break the independence of the Fed, to get rid of members who refuse to do his bidding.