By non-violent I mean not celebrating violence nor excusing it, but also more than that: I mean metabolizing the violence you feel in yourself, until you no longer have a need to express it aggressively.

The feelings we all have about violence are strong and fully human and I'm not judging them. I believe it's our responsibility to each carry our own share of these feelings, rather than firing them at others, including in the petty forms that aggression takes on an internet forum.

If you don't share that belief, that's fine, but we do need you to follow the site guidelines when commenting here, and they certainly cover the above request. So if you're going to comment, please make sure you're familiar with and following them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

My favorite poem, my -- my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:

"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country ...

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past -- and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of [people] in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

And let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

Bobby Kennedy, 1968

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2kWIa8wSC0

that's a nice fantasy; polling shows this is very much not the case right now

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

So perhaps a better excerpt in light of recent events would be

>> And another reason that I'm happy to live in [the second half of the 20th century] is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.

In the context of the 1960s, governments and nuclear weapons. But more broadly the same holds true for individuals.

Either we learn to live together despite our differences, or we use our newfound great power to annihilate each other.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_conquer

I feel we're riding a knife's edge and there's a hurricane brewing in the gulf of absurdity.

====

Incidentally, I feel like this is why it is so hard to actually learn from history. You can read about the 1918 'Spanish' Flu, but you think "we're smarter now". etc.

Also, if your grandpa likes telling war stories, it's only because he survived.

It was essentially not done because it would be too effective.

It reveals something deep about the human condition. Auchwitz was a perfectly lovely place for many of the employees as long as they disassociated themselves from all the suffering and evil around them.

A personal salute to all those who fought to preserve it.

There is a great video on the Poles who worked to preserve it. A lot of it is ... Unspeakable.

There's the story about the guy who says he was the hardest working man in Vietnam, and then when pressed about what he did, he states he was a trucker to the great surprise of anyone listening.

When asked why he thought that, he says "well I was the only one."

The joke is that everyone else he went to war with was claiming to be something else, so he must have delivered all the supplies himself.

The response is interesting to me, because having fought in a war, though I am not a US veteran -- I instantly got it. And the place I heard it from was more veteran dominated, and everyone instantly understood/appreciated the joke.

I would go so far as to say going to meetings physically was also a counterbalance.

When you're around other people, even ones who share your beliefs, and say 'I think we should murder that guy!' then in most crowds someone is going to say 'Hey fellow, are you okay?'

It's when you exclusively socially exist in online spaces that the most extreme actions suddenly become encouraged.

Or as Josh Johnson recently quipped, "The internet is all gas no brakes."

Where are these people going that they just see encouragement without resistance?

Here, I get to read all about the latest insanity in the last 24 hrs from…. 4 major countries in Crisis?

Tchau, from central Brazil (today).

-- James Callender, The Prospect Before Us, 1800

  You can read about the 1918 'Spanish' Flu, but you think "we're smarter now". etc.

What went poorly is our society's collective response. From the medical and governmental establishment, there was much hemming and hawing over what measures to take for way too long (masking, distancing, closing of public spaces, etc). Taking _any_ countermeasures against the spread of the virus also somehow became a culture war issue. I'm assuming GP meant "left or right" by "either side" so make of that what you will.

All (virtually all, it's not hyperbole) of the "misinformation" during covid turned out not to be that at all

There was no science behind social distancing, or masks, or the (so called, it's not an actual one) vaccine

Edit: I would like to remind people that downvotes do not, and never will, make me wrong

It's bizarre that there should be "sides" for how to deal with a public health issue. I can understand differing approaches, but it's the extreme polarisation that flabbergasts me.

Not sure what the comparison with COVID is supposed to be. Spanish flu was not created in a lab. There was no vaccine for the Spanish flu. The only real similarity is social distancing, quarantines, and masks -- we did that back then too.

This seems vague. Can you elaborate on the claim you’re making?

Nevertheless, I realize that it's usually a zeitgeist more than any particular thing that really flows through history.

Great quote. I feel the same way about 9/11 - the feeling of confusion, like "wtf is going on?!" IMHO, only those who lived it can really relate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_realism

I remember being grateful about how that doesn't really happen in the US (Trump being the most recent, but he survived). I guess I was wrong... and, in that case, Garcia Marquez might agree with you.

A school shooter isn’t trying to say “shut down all schools”.

But a terrorist flying a plane into one of the most important symbols of your most important city is certainly trying to send your society a message.

Same with this killing

Think about how you would feel if some guys beat you and your friends up in a bar fight, vs someone individually stalking you and beating you up outside your own house. You got beaten up in both cases, but the bar fight beating will unlikely make you feel as vulnerable and scared to leave the house as being stalked and targeted individually

This is the sort of violence that begets more violence.

It's like when a conservative person is canceled they throw an absolute fit, then turn around and cancel someone on the left, without making any connection.

I am definitely worried what Trump and republicans will do as a response.

More posts debating the justification for killing 11 people in a boat in the Caribbean who did not pose an imminent threat.

HN rules do not prevent any of these discussions.

But here we have a individual who advocated those killings.

Here we have an individual who publicly justified school massacres by saying those senseless deaths are a worthwhile price to pay for gun rights in the US.

On HN it's perfectly fine to justify all this violence, to argue that the violence is regrettable but necessary, but any equivalent discussion about this one individual is somehow beyond the pale.

I'm an outside observer, but isn't that the point of the right to bear arms in your constitution? I don't think the people who wrote it were naive enough to not understand guns could be used for evil purposes, so inherently they supported the price of the deaths of innocents as a trade off for the benefits of guns, right?

1. The goal of the second amendment was never "everyone should be able to have as many guns as they have, and if people use a gun to kill a dozen children then so be it", it was "it should be illegal for the government to take away people's weapons because the first step a tyrant would take is to disarm the populace so they couldn't fight back." That goal doesn't hold water anymore in a world where a computer geek working for the US military in a basement in Virginia can drone strike a wedding on the other side of the world. Instead, the NRA has made "guns good" into something that too many people make their whole personality, and the people who are actually trying to destroy society use that as a weapon to prevent any positive change when someone murders a dozen kids by making people feel like the only choice is between "anyone can have guns and children are murdered every day" or "the government takes your weapons and forces any dissidents into siberian-esque gulags".

2. Firearms were far less common, far less accessible, and far less deadly than they are now. Compared to what was available at the time, modern-day weapons like the AR15 are effectively weapons of mass destruction. If you went into a school with a civil war-era rifle and tried to kill as many people as you could, you'd maybe get one shot off which might not even kill someone if you hit them, and then you'd get tackled while you were trying to reload.

However I was speaking in the context of the tradeoffs of danger and the awareness of what blood you get on your hands for agreeing. Although the writers of this bill couldn't forsee AR15s and drone strikes, I'm sure they could forsee that there was a cost to freedom to bear arms.

“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.”

There’s endless legal debate how this should be interpreted, but it’s not obvious that there was an assumption that there would be mass individual gun ownership.

What they couldn't have predicted is that the Bill of Rights would also apply to the individual state and local governments since that wasn't true until the 14th amendment almost 100 years later and didn't really kick off until the 1900s. This is obviously important to understand what the original amendments mean.

RIP Charlie Kirk, no human deserves that. The rest of us left are still not necessarily better people after that exact moment, hopefully everyone takes a pause.

According to that study, 23% approved of the statement "I approve hostile activism to drive change by threatening or committing violence". It's even higher if you only focus on 18-34 year olds.

Full report here: https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2025-0...

The military took over for security purposes, and asked the leadership of the movement whom they wanted for an interim government. It was not the happy, peaceful democracy we all long for. It was a costly victory. But I feel happy the legitimate grievances the protestors held will lead to change. I hope they can find some candidates who will stand for them and reduce corruption, and do the best they can to help with the economy.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/former... ("Former Nepal PM Jhala Nath Khanal’s wife Rajyalaxmi Chitrakar burnt alive as protesters set his house on fire")

IMO it's far too early for anyone to declare any kind of victory, in that unresolved, chaotic power vacuum. No one can guess where that will go.

It's notable that all of those are pre-democratic.

By contrast, acts of bombings and other political violence were both more common and widespread in the 1970's and 1980's than now.[1] In those cases, people took great personal risks.

[Edit: removed Nepal, mentioned in other comments]

[1] https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/OPSR_TP...

Logically, we should start stockpiling force, lest others use more against us.

I imagine that "I support assassination to drive change" would be even less popular.

Maybe it wasn't 23%, but it was certainly not insignificant.

> It isn't hard to find evidence of people (especially young ones) equating speech with violence.

I don't think anyone conflates the phrase "threatening or committing violence" with "threatening or committing calling you a bad name". Yes, there's too much equating speech and violence, but the particular wording of threatening or committing imho is largely still reserved for the physical variety.

Except for in Japan? I noticed in all those reports Japan was at or near the bottom of countries measured for trust in their government. I was never able to find polling with regard to sentiment on Shinzo Abe's assassination but the majority of the country opposed the state funeral for him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Shinzo_Abe#Re...

One person in a thousand prepared to commit violence for political ends can be enough to turn a country into chaos.

When the rule of law is eroded, which it has been, in the US and worldwide. Then it does indeed become more rational to use violence to restore the rule of law. Unfortunately it also increases the motivation towards violence for personal gain, that makes the task of restoring the rule of law all that more difficult. Countries have spent years trying to recover that stability once it is lost.

You need protection, non corruption and a level of equality to be protected by that rule of law.

I think that is what mostly has been eroded - also the poorest 10% need a reason to believe in rule of law.

The others don't matter if it's lacking, because social contracts without contracts meaning anything are worthless.

A more likely explanation is that pro-violence propaganda began swamping social media in 2016, which is 9 years ago. 18 year olds have been exposed to it nonstop since they were 9 and 34 year olds since they were 25.

The people who are disposed to anger and violence move along the radicalization sales funnel relatively slowly. But already once you've shown interest, you start seeing increasingly angry content and only angry content. There is a lot of rhetoric specifically telling people they should be angry, should not try to help things, and should resort to violence, and actively get others to promote violence.

Being surrounded socially by that day in and day out is a challenge to anyone, and if you're predisposed to anger it can become intoxicating.

A lot of people want to say marketing doesn't work or that filter bubbles don't matter. But the bare facts are that we've had nearly a decade of multiple military intelligence agencies running nonstop campaigns promoting violent ideology in the US. And it would be naive to think that didn't make a difference.

The same sort of campaigns were run at a smaller scale during the Cold War and have been successful in provoking hot wars.

Hmm, interesting thesis. I'm aware something like half of the Whitmer Kidnapping plotters were feds/informants, to the point a few were exonerated in trial. There's certainly some evidence the government is intentionally provoking violent actors.

It's on record that Russian and Chinese propaganda campaigns in the US were aimed at sowing division generally, more so than any particular viewpoint.

In particular regard anti democratic developments, an increasing oligarchy, and increased inequality.

If I was a leader, I would take this really seriously and start to make some hard decisions.

In particular I'd like to apologize to one individual whom I insinuated was posting rage-bait.

To close, this is a tragic time in America. Each act of violence is one act too many.

That said, I think people need to recognize that in many aspects what's happening is connected to societal issues that gun control and gun regulations will have very little impact on - remember, even in Japan somebody could make some kind of battery ignited home-made shotgun and kill Shinzo Abe.

Countries with strict gun control enjoy far lower rates of firearm accidents, suicides, and murders. IMO it's clearly worth the tradeoff. Very few of us live in a place where only guns can solve our problems.

The fact that occasionally someone goes to great lengths to kill doesn't mean we should make it easier for everyone.

In which case you'd need a strong internal investigatory services in order to root these plots out before they happen by following up on leads and tips.

Well... not to get political, but I think we're hollowing that out too?

Utah has what they call "constitutional carry." Extremely permissive gun laws. I'd bet there were several people carrying concealed in that crowd, not counting security and police.

Regardless of where you stand on the subject of concealed carry, I don't think its controversial to say we shouldn't be encouraging untrained/unvetted folks to go seek out would-be assassins before they have demonstrated themselves to be a danger. That's exactly how "armed security" shot and killed an actual bystander at the Salt Lake City 50501 demonstration earlier this year.

Even so, most folks who carry prefer concealed carry for tactical reasons, one of which being that unless you have your rifle in a ready position, its not very useful in a self-defense situation, and simply marks you as "shoot this one first". And it turns out that walking around with a rifle in a ready position is generally perceived as aggressive, regardless of actual intent, even by those comfortable with firearms (consider a police officer approaching with a holstered weapon vs one in their hand).

So in the context of this shot, it ought to be relatively easy to pick out the shooter in the moment, the problem is that a ~200m radius around the tent where Kirk was speaking covers a lot of territory, and that's a lot of ground to cover effectively without obviously interfering with students' free movement about their college campus.

https://www.utahpoliticalwatch.news/what-actually-happened-a...

They let hotel inhabitants leave before burning it down. The finance minister got caught by the mob and survived. Does make it seem quite controlled, imo.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45166972

edit: this too - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45184558

I find it extremely disturbing that half the country are people who are very well educated, earning well above average from their white-collar careers, yet they still think political violence is acceptable or funny.

This country is doomed.

(quick edit) And anyone who doesn't believe me go to Bluesky right now and look.

I have seen right-wing commenters say that the left was saying this. When I asked for examples I got nothing. I got responses, but the left-of-center commenters they pointed to were in the two categories I describe above: those saying the event is terrible and those saying it's ironic.

Now, I'm sure you can find people saying political violence is okay. I'm just saying I haven't seen it at all and therefore it isn't the central tendency in my feed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_Lead_(Italy)

My understanding of the Italian political climate of the 60s, 70s, and 80s is that there were political groups/cells (on both the far right and far left) that organized around violent acts to further their political goals (which involved the eventual authoritarian takeover of the Italian government by either the far right or far left). For example, you can think of the Red Brigades to be akin to the Black Panthers, but with actual terrorism.

In contrast, most political violence in America has been less organized and more individual-driven (e.g., see the Oklahoma City Bombing). For better or worse, the police state in the US has been quite successful in addressing and dispersing political groups that advocate for violence as a viable means for societal change.

Resistance orgs across the ideological spectrum were systematically dismantled after decades of violence because their hierarchical command structures made them vulnerable to infiltration, decapitation and RICO-style prosecutions. The Weather Underground, Red Army Faction, European Fascist groups and many white supremacist groups all fell to the same structural weaknesses.

Lessons were codified by the KKK and Aryan Nations movements in the USA in the early 90s by Louis Beam's[1] who wrote about distributed organisational models.

This was so successful it cross-pollination to other groups globally. Other movements adopted variations of this structure, from modern far-right and far-left groups to jihadist organisations[2]

This is probably the most significant adaptation in ideological warfare since guerilla doctorine, and it's arguable that there has been a large-scale failure in adapting to it.

The internet and social media have just accelerated it's effectiveness.

"Inspired by" vs "carried out by" ideological violence today is the norm.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaderless_resistance

[1] https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/louis-be...

[2] https://www.memri.org/reports/al-qaeda-military-strategist-a...

He wasn't a "lone wolf".

The only thing I can think of is to clamp down hard on political violence, but also on speech which advocates for violence (e.g. glorifying Luigi Mangione, calling everyone a Nazi, etc.). Freedom of speech ends where it actually turns into violence.

> TPUSA has been described as the fastest growing organization of campus chapters in America, and according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, is the dominant force in campus conservatism.

They've been quite influential, and those campus efforts likely contributed to the Gen Z turnout that helped win in 2024.

He recently went to Cambridge Univ and debated a student who actual knew his routine. It didn't go well for him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn0_2iACV-A

Given that and the fact that we're in the middle of a new South Park season, a show known for its last-minute incorporation of real-world news into storylines, it will be interesting to see how the show handles this tragic development.

1. He was influential in a influential circle of people who roughly speaking drive what gets discussed and shown to a wider audience. In a favourite-band's favourite-band sense. His jubilee video just recently got 31 million views on youtube and probably a billion more on tiktok and reels.

2. If he wasn't killed by some nut who thought the flying spaghetti monster told him to do it then this is a really clear example of online politics and discourse jumping violently into the physical world. That's a real vibe shift if I have it right that it's basically the first assassination of that kind.

It wouldn't shock me at all if the driving topic here was actually gaza rather than domestic politics.

I think a difficulty in searching for such answers is assuming that it was a well reasoned decision. I'm not sure how often attempting to take a life is a purely rational decision, devoid of intense emotional motivations (hatred, self-preservation, fear, revenge, etc.). And that's all assuming the assailant was of somewhat sound mind.

I think one of the dangers of more and more extreme divisions in society is that those divisions cloud our mental processes, threaten our emotional health, and take away opportunities for meaningful civil discourse. All of which can lead to more heinous acts that we struggle to make sense of. One of the scariest parts for me is that this can all be too self reinforcing ("Their side did this bad thing to our side, let's get them back!!!" repeat/escalate...). How do we break the cycle?

There are plenty of dangerous mentally ill people out there who don't use any type of logic or reason as a basis for their decision-making.

The shooter is also in custody already and captured thankfully.

Crazy people murder all the time, hell he probably did it for a girl. See the movie Taxi Driver.

That is a lot of people

Yes, you are wrong, he was the leader of the most powerful campus conservative movement group in the country, was an extremely prominent figure in right-wing media, to the point where he is a central figure in pop culture images of the right, and a central target for being too soft of organizing figures for even farthe-right groups.

> What change was the person who shot him hoping to elicit?

Motives for assassinations (attempted or actual) of politicial figures are often incoherent. Political assassins aren’t always (or even often) strategic actors with a clear, rationally designed programs.

Yes, you're wrong there (no offense). He's quite popular beyond X (formerly Twitter), particularly amongst the young (~20s) conservative movements. For example, he has almost 4 million subscribers on YouTube and similar on TikTok.

I'd say X isn't even his most popular platform. He's much more popular on video platforms, due to his open campus debates.

I attended one of Charlie's debates this past year and they pretty much let anyone walk up to the mic. It wasn't scripted or censored, that I saw.

To me what's been going on is a shakedown run of the new mediums and how they exploit cognitive defects and lack of exposure in audiences.

In a total Marshall McLuhan "The Medium is the Message" some people like Shapiro, Trump, and Kirk just naturally groove in certain mediums and are able to play them like Ray Charles plays the piano.

And because society doesn't have any sort of natural exposure to this they're able to gain massive audiences and use that influence for nefarious purposes.

I'm not sure what the solution to this problem is though.

On the one had I think that there is going to be a natural feedback mechanism that puts keeps their population in check (which is basically what we just saw today) but that isn't the most desireable outcome.

I’d heard of him-I’ve lived my whole life in Australia, and although I have a Twitter/X account, I almost never use it, and that’s not a new thing, I dabbled with it but never committed.

Do most Australians know who he was? I don’t have any hard data, but my “No” to that is very confident. But I remember briefly discussing him (in person) with one of my old friends from high school, who is deep into right-wing politics (he’s a member of Australia’s One Nation party, which a lot of people would label “far right”, yet mainstream enough to have a small number of seats in Parliament)

Me too! I follow politics, elections, and world affairs very closely, but I am embarrassed to admit - I had no idea who he was. Although I had heard about 'Turning Point USA'.

The problem is that that kind of influence often goes under the radar for people outside the circles in question, because influence is no longer mediated as centrally as it used to be, it’s more targeted and siloed. That’s a big part of how the current political situation in the US arose.

Even if we assume those numbers are inflated, that's quite a bit of influence if someone is influential only on Twitter.

“Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, died Wednesday after being shot at an event at Utah Valley University, President Donald Trump said.”

He influenced the US President, that seems pretty influential to me. Anecdotally, my kid in high school surprised me by knowing quite a lot about them.

He also lied about widespread election fraud among other things so there are many reasons a person would want to target him

That says a lot more about those "other well-known figures" than it does about him and his already extreme ideology

Why does this keep getting posted everywhere after he got shot? It’s like someone is running a campaign

I have seen it in Reddit comments, Twitter/X, HN, and TikTok. Literally same comment or variation plastered

Plus, this isn’t a 2nd amendment issue

This doesn't condone violence but offers context as to how he would've assessed a similar situation if he weren't the target.

But are we suggesting that he should have deployed counter snipers?

For example, maybe (or maybe not) for you it's just an abstract argument about far-away matters, but when Kirk called Leviticus 20:13 (the one about killing men who lie with men) "God's perfect law", it's not so abstract to gay people.

There are only ~16,000 non-suicide related firearm deaths in the US. There are about 40,000 vehicle related deaths in the US. We could save a lot of lives if we made our society far less car dependent and had more restrictions on allowing people to operate vehicles in public spaces.

Kirk's position was to have guns as unregulated as possible, so I pretty much DGAF when the consequences of his position come home to roost.

Objectively, my position is both serious and not just realistic, but actually lived reality here in Europe. You are free to visit our continent whenever you want, I can only recommend it.

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/no-traffic-deaths-in-helsinki-finland-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation

Helsinki may be a lucky coincidence. It doesn't prove it's possible everywhere.

What if that is purpose?

Kirk regularly spoke out against antisemitism on both the left and right. So much so, in fact, Israeli Prime Minister tweeted[0] his condolences, praising Kirk as a strong, positive force for Jewish and Christian values.

[0]: https://x.com/netanyahu/status/1965888327938158764

> An estimated 62–153 black men were murdered while surrendering to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and members of the Ku Klux Klan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_massacre

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/opinion/lincoln-schmitt-t...

Hard disagree. Ignoring it is what allows systemic injustice to persist -- why do we care, today, what Eugenicists in the early 1900s had to say? Jim Crow implementers and supporters? Daughters of the Confederacy?

If the reality of history undermines your respect for American philosophical thought, then perhaps the American philosophical thought is not quite worthy of the pedestal it was placed on.

That said I think it’s important to separate good ideas from their troubled past and use them where they still apply. People are not perfect, but a good idea is good no matter where it comes from. Those good ideas shape culture and shape the destiny of nations. That’s what happened in America, and there’s a lot to be learned from the past. Unless the point is to undermine the recipe that made America into what it is today, then it doesn’t make sense to measure people who didn’t live in our time by our sensibilities, morality or ethics.

We can learn their good stuff, and improve on what they didn’t do well.

Your comment maps precisely to: we've had zero network intrusions, why are we paying these cybersecurity professionals?

So much fascism and authoritarianism was blocked since WW2 because scholars called it out early.

Guess what scholars called out in the US in 2016, but most politicians put party over country? "We scaled back our cybersecurity professionals and saved a ton of budget! On an unrelated note, do we have data breach insurance?"

There is certainly room to punch fascists in the face when hostilities are hot. We can't start there and remain a tolerant society dealing with the paradox of tolerance. The first steps are shunning and ceasing support, isolating the infected into appropriately deprived states of resource loss, and not political violence.

There is a great case study in Daryl Davis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis

An apt comparison would be instituting mandatory cybersecurity training for employees as a direct response to a breach. That is a great step to take post-cleanup but does basically nothing to address the issue at hand.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Depending on your interpretation of "effective" I'm not sure I entirely agree. Political campaigners on both side of the political spectrum have a lot of respect for Charlie Kirk and his ability to raise funds and make a difference in his political activism. From what I've heard, the stuff he did on camera was actually the weaker part of his skill set, its his off-camera work that the GOP will sorely miss.

Slavery, patriarchy, indentured servitude, excessive religiosity, monarchy, rejection of other cultures, all these seem to be good things to leave in the rearview mirror.

The items you listed fluctuate rapidly by popular vote. These others aren't governed by democracy, but by the economic advantage of the wealthy few who control them.

This is untrue. You may have seen some of the many "own the libs" style edits of him out there, some of which he/his team created and promoted. But to say he never participated in real debate shows you haven't adequately found information outside your filter bubble. There are many examples like the one below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-X0YD0tYTw

The race baiting and conspiracy theories will be what Charlie Kirk is remembered for because that’s what he did constantly. There’s a whole section of his Wikipedia covering the falsehoods he spread about covid, election fraud, H1N1, human trafficking, protests in France etc.

It’s a bit strange to say that I’m somehow uninformed because of my “filter bubble” seeing as in order to call Charlie Kirk’s performances legitimate debate you would either have to have never heard of his many, many outright lies or believe that it’s acceptable to make stuff up in a debate. (If the latter is the case we simply disagree on what constitutes a real debate)

I’m familiar with his routine, which is why I described his performances as sometimes resembling legitimate debate. He was able to at times take (from your example) twelve minutes out of several hours of owning the libs to engage in a more mild performance, but that’s not the same thing as someone that has a genuinely good-faith interest in debate. That’s just taking a few minutes to make a marketing video for his podcast/speaking tours.

You're far from the only account doing this, of course, but (perhaps due to randomness) I've noticed several places you've done it in this thread, in contradiction of both https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45203452 and https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

He’s cherry-picking one interaction, has all the editing controls, and even with all that, he literally interrupted the guy less than a minute in.

This is exactly what I meant: the appearance of a debate, with a heavy anvil on the scale.

Actually, not “may or may not.”

Bad faith arguments and cheap rhetorical trickery didn't wash.

The only excerpts from those debates on the Charlie Kirk channel are edited to show him in a good light - the original full videos tell a different tale.

I don't doubt he lost debates. I don't doubt that there were instances where he took cheap rhetorical shots. I've done that, you've done that, and he did that.

Watch the video and you will undoubtedly understand OP's point

"I am right therefore I win" is all the proof I need that you have watched a lot of Charlie Kirk edits.

Cambridge debating is a microcosm of parliamentary debates in the UK, AU and elsewhere that I'm not entirely sure the US has in government anymore, if ever - the CSPAN footage I've seen largely features lone people showboating unchallenged, often with props.

Your 12 minute video shows a back and forth near Q&A exchange between Kirk and another not entirely opposed with Kirk taking various interpretations of well regulated militia as he saw them with little push back.

It has edits and has been self selected and post produced by Kirk to post on his channel to highlight how "good" he is.

There are many examples of videos like the one below, and if you'd seen any of them, you would absolutely understand why people think this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-X0YD0tYTw

You may have seen one of the many "own the libs" style edits of him out there, some of which he/his team created and promoted. Those exist, as do many examples like the below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-X0YD0tYTw

This is not correct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

This has helped me to understand a lot of human behavior and social media posts and reactions (also propaganda, cults, sales, etc)

You may think you have come to a logical conclusion about political issue x or political party x, but very likely the vast majority of us are first having a triggered emotional reaction and later using our pre-frontal cortex to logically create a narrative on why we feel this way and justify it.

Taken to extremes I think you can see things like today happen and see how people react.

Sometimes I catch myself defending someone or a position and later realize I am just wrong, it’s just that I had an emotional reaction felt a possible connection with the person or a cause or vibe they expressed or are connected with and then my attorney brain kicks into overdrive trying to make it all add up.

It also explains a lot of domestic issues, if you are upset or scared your brain stays in the limbic center and is literally incapable of rational thought until you calm down or feel safe.

Just my two cents

Remember Charlie got shot while talking about gun violence. He himself said gun deaths are a worthy price to pay for freedom. Unfortunately there is a freedom Americans don't have, the freedom to feel at peace around each other. The freedom from fear of being shot.

I’m probably wrong, but dang this seems like such a silly thing to personally worry about.

But I also know human brains are bad at statistics. Meh.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-death...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

The real violence is the silent acceptance of the US state and any push to hide resistance behind approved, controlled methods, like the pretend democracy of the US state.

Yanks are currently supporting genocides in Gaza and Yemen. Pressuring people to wait to do anything about it until another election between the 2 worst people the 2 worst political parties on the planet, neither of whom will do anything to stop the ongoing murders, is open flagrant support for genocide.

In the US, violence is something you do collectively to other people. Thats normalised, common, even desired by a great many people. Just the other day the US celebrated the extrajudicial killing of venezuelans suspected of carrying drugs on a boat.

Why is it when violence inevitably visits the proponents and enablers of violence they are protected from disagreement, mourned and honoured by everyone. Is it just a fear of experiencing the instability you perpetuate to everyone else?

But every time a rich white asshole gets shot there's bound to be thousands of comments here and people clutching their pearls and saying it's the end of civil society. But the pile of dead schoolchildren, black people shot by cops, brown people shot by the military, Jews and gay people shot by spree killers? Not a care in the world, that's just background noise.

Trump (or whomever controls his Truth Social account - I seriously doubt he knows how Photoshop works) posts a meme about "Chipocalypse now" bragging about the violence he intends to commit against his own people and no one seems to care. Presidents have been taken down for far less. But it's Chicago, it's full of black people and immigrants so who gives a fuck?

I think you're right. I think Americans are afraid because for the first time in their lives they're being treated the way America has treated everyone who isn't straight, white, Christian and American, that the systems of oppression they built and which feed their empire are actually being turned on them. The only thing I can say is they aren't nearly afraid enough.

I wonder if he/she/they will ever be caught?

Someone got up to use the bathroom and didn’t lock the machine. Dude thought he was being funny. But of course since he logged on to the adjacent machine he put himself on the suspect list and got caught. And in a hell of lot of trouble as I recall. I think he got expelled, too.

That was for a prank, not an assassination.

The thing some crime dramas don’t get right is that while circumstantial and tainted evidence cannot get you a conviction, it is absolutely possible for it to be used to prioritize manpower used to narrow you down to the top of the list.

There’s a thing in law enforcement called Parallel Construction. It can be used to protect confidential informants such as in undercover operations, but it can also be used to replace evidence that was found illegally, such as illegal recording or theft by a neighbor.

They just need to find something that follows process front to back. They don’t need to do that in order to figure out it was you in the first place.

Statistics say the spouse or partner almost always committed the murder. Even lacking any evidence they look really really hard at these people. It’s not illegal or unfair to do so. It’s triage. If I’m looking at Mrs Fredrickson’s murder, I’m not looking at any cold cases or spending effort on many other active cases. It’s unfortunately a numbers game.

People are calling this an assassination because they are making the (probably reasonable) guess that the reason to shoot Charlie Kirk during a political speech is to make a political statement.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45203452 and stop doing this, we'd appreciate it.

(Your account is far from the only one posting abusively in this thread, and it's probably random that I happened to see your posts, but still - this is not ok.)

Some years ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._sniper_attacks

If you find this horrifying (and I hope you do, because there can be no moral justification for celebrating murder), then I encourage you to really think about whether we would not be better off without such extremist language poisoning people's minds. We have to try to stop escalating, or the cycle is going to destroy our society.

My conclusion is that you don't mind making apocalyptic statements about actions you think are dangerous to society, which sits uncomfortably with your asking other people not to.

It would bring on the end of a society. It might well happen in the US case, they've been heading in a pretty dangerous direction rhetorically. If we take the Soviet Union as a benchmark they probably have a long way to go but that sort of journey seems unnecessary and stupid.

"You shouldn't do anything unjustified" is an uncontroversial and useless prescription.

The “just different beliefs” framing is a dodge. We’re not talking about Coke vs. Pepsi here—we’re talking about beliefs that deny others’ humanity, spread lies, or justify violence. When a “belief” is racist, sexist, conspiratorial, or openly anti-democratic, it’s not just different, it’s harmful. Pretending otherwise is how extremism hides in plain sight.

This is a nonsense argument. It is possible that constantly making apocalyptic statements can result in an apocalypse, and saying that people should stop doing that is not contradictory.

The words you use matter. If trump is an existential threat to democracy, he should be assassinated. If you're not advocating for murderous escalation, then stop using those words (for example).

Who/what is defining assassination as a reasonable response to that threat, who/what maintains the list of words which can replace "democracy" in that section, and what happens when someone disagrees with the maintainer of that list?

Just curious, do you believe someone who, without evidence, claims that an election is stolen, and then successfully goads their supporters into violence over that claim is a threat to democracy?

Yes, it's true that lunatics on both sides may use their side's rhetoric as a call to action but often this isn't even the case and they're just hopelessly confused and mentally ill people. It'd be nice if we lived in a society where those people couldn't get guns or could get mental health treatment and it'd be nice if one side of this debate didn't weaponize these common sense ideas into identity politics but here we are.

It is historically proven as the first step to violence. People seem to think that words don't matter.

They matter very much. Just because you can read millions of words a day, doesn't mean they're not powerful.

Support him or no, he didn't deserve to die for his political beliefs.

I definitely believe that people should be more understanding of each other, and less quick to jump to insults and othering, but we know so little about this situation, to be so confident that it was caused by speech seems extreme.

I am also aware that a lot of the political violence of the last few years ended up not being motivated by the reasons one might naturally expect.

At the root I agree in principal though. It's, for example, still possible he picked a bad fight with an unstable individual in a bar last night (over something not politically related) and they followed him to the event he was speaking at to shoot him. I'm not as convinced I've seen that kind of thing happen "a lot", but it's true we don't have post validation yet.

There is no inherent threat of violence in saying "this person is a threat to democracy". This is why the US has strong protections for speech, so that we don't get arbitrary determinations of what's acceptable and what's not.

Well, yes. People point this out regularly with mass shootings. Sometimes the shooters helpfully leave a list of all the violent rhetoric that inspired them. Anders Breivik claimed to be acting against an "existential threat". Those words get used a lot.

Someone who calls for violence or does violence against people wishing to have open debate is the essence of fascism.

what if that persuasion is not logic, but propaganda, and the end result of following said goals is the loss of your way of life? What if lies are held as truth and money allows the lies to be repeated so often many don't even realize their axioms are baseless? What happens to the sheep when the wolves vote to eat the sheep?

But of all things Charlie Kirk was not, first among them: He was not "a threat to democracy".

As someone of Eastern European origins I would celebrate Vladimir Putin's murder, especially since he's responsible for the murder for so many in Ukraine today (both Russians and Ukrainians). I think the reality is a touch more nuanced than the absolutist ethical stance.

> JOE BIDEN, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, DEMOCRAT: "There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones."

> BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, DEMOCRAT: "We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy."

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/reactions-fatal-shooting-us...

This happened a few hours ago while the decedent was commenting on 5/5700 mass shootings being performed by trans people being enough to take rights, which the decedent normally argues should not be abrogated, away, and that most shootings were gang violence. This is after a few years long history of promoting inaction on guns despite clear Constitutionality and clear need.

Ironically it was at a school, making it a school shooting. Unironically, there was a school shooting in Colorado occurring at the same time.

Guns are the problem. Everyone knows this. Some try to justify it anyway, Mr. Kirk among them.

Like I said, I simply don't understand why someone's response mere hours after a deadly shooting is "I blame my political enemies who are wholly uninvolved and tried to help prevent these types of occurrences."

---

Edit --

Here are two quotes from, as you said, your political enemies:

> JOE BIDEN, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, DEMOCRAT: "There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones."

> BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, DEMOCRAT: "We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy."

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/reactions-fatal-shooting-us...

I genuinely can’t tell if you realize that this is a description of the victim, and your comment could easily be construed as a justification for what happened, or if you condemn the action so heartily you missed that.

Which leads to my point: there are discourses around this that completely miss each other. That’s a huge problem because so many people will loudly express strongly held emotions and two people will read completely opposite view points. US public discourse is at a point where language, without copying context, is failing.

Saying “both sides miss each other” isn’t true either: I’m convinced one side is perfectly capable of quoting leaders of the other, even if they find it absurd, but the reciprocal isn’t true. Many people can’t today say what was the point of one of the largest presidential campaign. They’ll mention points that were never raised by any surrogate or leaders. But they can’t tell that because the relationship is complete severed.

I don’t think there’s a balanced argument around violence, either: one side has leaders who vocally and daily argue for illegal acts violence, demand widespread gun possession vs. another where some commentators occasionally mention that violent revolution is an option, but leaders are always respectful. The vast majority of people who commit gun violence support one particular political movement, even the violence against the leaders of that same movement. If that’s not obvious to you, I can assure you that you are out off from a large part of the political discourse about the US, not just around you, but internationally.

To be clear, I don’t think Kirk was. But there are people who are even vocal about their disdain for democracy. It would feel weird to treat them as if they weren’t who they say they are.

IMO the sad reality is that we live in increasingly dark times. Anti democratic forces are stronger than they have been in recent history. Us all agreeing to not talk about it won’t change that.

What does that even mean?

If someone decides of their own volition to become a slave, is that not their free will?

Most of us believe that certain rights should be inalienable.

> Labeling someone a “danger” an emotional ad hominem argument

Sometimes, perhaps, but not always.

Sure. When did that vote happen?

There’s a false right-wing talking point that the US “is a republic, not a democracy”. The US is both a representative democracy and a republic, but the talking point equivocates on the meaning of “democracy”, conflating it with direct democracy, and this apparently fools far more people than it should.

The goal of people who push such propaganda is to weaken support for, and understanding of, democracy. There isn’t any doubt that they, and the people who unthinkingly repeat the propaganda, are a threat to democracy.

Deport an illegal immigrant? They may get killed back in their more dangerous home country (or die slowly due to less access to medicine), or grow their home economy instead of yours. Let them stay? Maybe they're a dangerous criminal and will kill someone here. Don't deport any? Your culture and nation get diluted into nothing - some value those things highly, others don't, but to the former, that's an existential threat.

Tax fossil fuels? The economy slows, there's less money for hospitals, more crime due to poverty, this can easily kill people, or maybe it's harder to keep up with China. Don't tax them, and now you're taking your chances with global warming.

Spy on everyone's communication? You've just made it much easier for a tyrannical government to arise, and those have killed millions, and trampled values many hold as dear as life itself. Don't spy? Well maybe you miss a few terrorist attacks, but you also have a harder time identifying hostile foreign propaganda, which could have devastating but hard to isolate effects.

Simply put, death, existential threats, threats to democracy, etc., are common in politics, and one cannot talk honestly about it while avoiding their mention. I would say that, unless you cannot keep a cool head in those circumstances, you shouldn't get into politics in any capacity. But of course, those that need this advice won't heed it.

I am betting if you read a history of germany, you would probably pick roughly the same point that the US has long since passed as the time to resist openly. Most people do in abstract.

But we should be civil. Which is different than being nice, but is far more important. Many generals in war are not terribly nice to their enemies. They are, however, civil.

We lost more than ordered discourse in our abrogation of the societal pact with civility.

Regardless of your political bent, this sort of shit is sickening and genuinely disturbing, particularly when it occurs at (as this did) at a university whose ostensible raison d'etre is to ventilate different ideas, offensive or not. I realise this event wasn't a 'debate' per se but nevertheless it's the ethos and optics that matter.

There's also the incredibly myopic immaturity inherent in using violence for the sole or primary purpose of silencing the speaker and signalling to others that violence is somehow an acceptable form of dialogue. The myopic absurdity of this is of course that it is a cycle that can never end if all participants share that view, ensuring that it is inevitably self-defeating. Violence can make sense under certain circumstances - coups, revolutions, wars - but in the context of mere rhetoric it's abhorrent to witness.

Just a grotesque reflection in a long list of them that we as a species, or very many of us - perhaps more than we want to admit - are extremely violent and brutal.

Sickening and sobering, and again you could plug in any speaker/polemicist from whichever part of the political spectrum in here and it would be no less true.

But to my knowledge Kirk never did and 'live by the sword, die by the sword' wouldn't apply here. In fact I can't think of an instance in recent history where this would have applied - the logical implications inherent in such rhetoric are obvious to most people immediately. Even the Russians as a general rule don't murder their exiled former rulers - the new Czar figures he could be next, and wouldn't want to set a precedent.

This may have been an offensive reply to the original comment:

It's important for Me to play Devil's Advocate, here, because the original statement overlooks the amazingly constructive qualities humanity offers.

Overlooking == under-capitalizing. Which is an error. And judgement is important to hang onto in a crisis.

This is a crisis.

Despite all our fancy gadgets and fancy thinking and fancy philosophies, we aren't really all that different from those who lived a thousand or ten thousand years ago.

His choice of getting in to the middle of people and answering anyone's questions in a situation where there's no re-takes, no edits, even if he might've felt overbearing, was quite a fire test of the commenter's arguments versus his counter-arguments.

His assassination really is a direct attack on debate itself.

There really isn't a world where the sick people cheering this have any real respect for democratic values of a free world full of all kinds of thinkers. Maybe for something more akin to that one dialog "choice" in Avowed. You know if you know.

Why is this post flag worthy? I'm just asking questions. I thought we should be able to do that????

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Not to mention Kirk's views were not too different from the majority of American voters who elected our current president.

Why make such a comparison? Don't you think this sort of rhetoric contributes to the toxic political landscape we find ourselves in?

Yes, that's the issue. He is a white nationalist, he supports the killings in Gaza, he supports Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. He has said numerous falsehoods against blacks and other minorities to galvanize hatred. He very much contributed to building this violent and senseless world he left us trapped inside of.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Plenty of websites track this legislation.

If you really wanted, you could have an agent do deep research and answer that for you.

I am aware that it has become a right wing talking point but I don’t care. You don’t heal divisions by treating people differently based on race, and that’s what many media outlets seem to be doing.

FWIW, I don’t like Elon, and Twitter has sort of self-selected to become more right wing (and very racist in places) but choosing another platform due to other political biases is also bad… echo chambers have caused what we are seeing.

edit: The suppression is here. What did I say that was not adding to the conversation?

I don’t read Twitter, but I do read my local news. I’m not quite sure that anyone is better off now that her murder is being nationally reported, to be honest.

For those who want to know without exposing themselves: He's sitting in a chair when he takes a round to the neck. Clean exit. It's over within three seconds.

I always wonder if media hiding gore allows people to not get more upset about violence. The lynching of Emmett Till would not have had the same impact without his mother having an open casket funeral. Would things have gone differently if more people had been exposed to images from Sandy Hook?

People hear of kids dying in “bombings” but ignore the reality that it means they were: crushed, burned to death, dismembered, etc etc.

Excessive exposure to shock images from forum trolls back in the '90s.

Even though I have an extremely negative opinion of Charlie, I'd feel too bad thinking about the pain his family would be experiencing. The family (especially children) don't deserve that.

Gore definitely made me a depressed person in grade school, but the only reaction I'm having to this is concern about: - conservatives getting ready for violence - the state getting ready to use this to further erode civil liberties - the left fanning the flames for conservatives

If we saw death up close and personal, perhaps we could become a bit more empathetic. I seriously wonder if, for example, we published the horrific photos of the aftermath of a school shooting, that would result in more honest discourse in this country on gun control.

https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-death-penalty-public-e...

Never heard of him before today but he seems to have been a delight.

It is graphic and shows how fragile we are, how it will go down if you are in that situation

So this is a outlier only in that someone was equipped and trained to a fairly serious degree. Someone on the order of a squad designated marksman (SDM) is certainly capable of this. The US military has a few thousand active duty personal trained to that level across the several branches, and there are 10's of thousands of veterans. There are also many SWAT and other LEOs and an uncountable number of enthusiasts and serious hunters with sufficient training and weapons.

No serious training or equipment would be required for this close of a shot. I've taken deer over 200 yards away with my $500 rifle, no training other than shooting on and off since I was a kid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmteh_NChOQ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrackingPoint

Between that and cheap quadcopter drones, I expect political assassinations to skyrocket in the future.

I've killed deer beyond 200 yards sitting on a stump with a cheap rifle, it's not actually that hard if you've shot a bit before. The nerves though... you're right there, I couldn't imagine.

Anyway, the point is that it's really not a difficult shot at all, and only requires very rudimentary training that is readily available to anyone who can make a few trips to the range.

At say 3000fps velocity, time to target is less than 450ms.

This is almost point and shoot. It’s entirely possible someone fairly untrained just aimed at the forehead and ended up with neck

He could have been aiming for the skull for all we know. He could have been aiming for the chest. Hell, he could have been aiming for someone behind Kirk.

The shooter had 1 target, and he delivered a 100% kill shot.

You could say "it wasn't impressive", but you can't say it was crap...

It was crap. I highly doubt the neck was the target. If the head was the target, then the same distance but in another direction, would have missed.

Regardless, it's still sad that someone died, especially in this manner (regardless of politics).

The person is probably easier frankly.

Very few will like where this leads.

I hope cooler heads prevail and pray for him and his family.

Increased political violence is bad. The state starts breaking down since the price for everything is death so action stalls.

and spending millions of dollars to bus people to a violent insurrection, apparently. I'd forgotten until I was reading wikipedia as a consequence of this news.

I’m not a public figure but I support the 2A, would you feel sorry for me if I was shot giving a speech?

Would you feel different if Charlie was murdered by a machete or hand grenade?

I don't know what that has to do with anything. Plus, the 2A forbids mandatory licensing for firearms users.

> I’m not a public figure but I support the 2A, would you feel sorry for me if I was shot giving a speech?

It's not about whether someone supports the 2A or not. It's what they do with their lives that matters. If a person's life's mission is to deny white privilege and defend the 2A despite its obvious risks, then make a public statement that school shootings are an acceptable price to pay so that we can have it, then no, I'm not going to feel sorry for that person if they are shot. It's poetic justice. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

> Would you feel different if Charlie was murdered by a machete or hand grenade?

A machete, yes. That has a legitimate use; as with a car, its primary purpose is not to hurt people. A hand grenade, no, as its primary purpose is to harm people, and Mr. Kirk's mission was to protect the rights of those who want to possess devices whose sole purpose is to harm people.

Genuinely curious for an example of domestic assassination working out well for anyone.

If they survive, they’re forgiven and quasi-deified. If they die, they’re martyred and replaced.

The only cases where this has worked is when it’s a state wholesale wiping out the other side’s political leadership, e.g. Roman proscriptions.

That said, the assassination of Carrero Blanco, who was set to be Franco's successor, was instrumental in Spain's transition to democracy.

The difference between the murder of the planned successor of an actual, literal dictator in an actual, literal dictatorship and what happened today is, I hope, evident to everyone.

This is a good example. Thank you.

Unless you don't count it as assassination because they held the flimsiest short kangaroo court before it happened, just to fuck with him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetsuya_Yamagami

This isn't to say this has any bearing on this event though.

Indira Gandhi? Rajiv Gandhi?

But in _recent_ memory, the one that comes to mind immediately is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi not too long after 9/11. His death disrupted Al Qaeda in Iraq which almost certainly was a net benefit.

Bin laden himself also comes to mind but it's unclear how much more potential he had to inflict terror on the world at the time in his life when he was assassinated.

Giving rise to ISIS.

> Bin laden himself also comes to mind but it's unclear how much more potential he had to inflict terror on the world at the time in his life when he was assassinated.

Political theater at best.

However if you are a nihilist, none of this matters anyway.

This happened long ago. Politics is exhausting (constant campaigning), poorly paid (unless you can leverage your position to sell bestselling books and speaking engagements later), and you have to check your logic and common sense at the chamber door. You have to have unlimited optimism to not become overwhelmed with cynicism and demotivated by despair from the sausage making process. Overall, politics is a shitty job mainly practiced by hucksters, psychopaths, and well-meaning but naive people who turn into a huckster or psychopath.

It’s going to sound absurd, but right now, USA’s global image is a very good counter-ad towards “complete” freedom of speech.

We are also an example when a people becomes completely divorced from their cultural and religious heritage. Without a moral anchor, we are a people cast adrift, lost in confusion, calling evil good and good evil, all trying to do our own thing and benefit ourselves, consumed by greed, by self-interest.

Freedom of speech, or lack there-of, plays no role in what is happening in the United States. This country and its founding charters were written for a moral people. That the country is byzantine, crumbling, has more to do with a people who have lost their way than it has to do with this-or-that law that the government no longer heeds.

what moral anchor do you think we need?

Circa 2017 during then “punching Nazis” era of social discourse, I started a new job. The first week in I went for lunch with a Junior teammate and was told “violence against ‘Nazis’” is fine, it’s justified. I asked how. I was told, my brain is a part of the body, so if someone says something so stupid that it ‘hurts the brain,’ the speech is now assault, so counter-violence is justified.

I, with hint of irony, told my new coworker that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard and asked if I should now assault them for hurting my brain… and was met with hostility.

I don’t quite known I’m going with this exactly, but I feel folks are not giving the world around them an honest assessment, no matter their Ivy diploma. Politics isn’t a “gotcha game” and please stop tying to make it such.

If it was just a matter of people internalizing that killing fascists is fine and thus that calling people fascists is dangerous, then we would not see the same sort of violence being perpetrated against other politicians not getting the same label.

Kirk himself suggested that a "real patriot who wanted to be a midterm hero" should bail out the man who nearly killed Pelosi's husband. The rhetoric around political violence in this country has been ratcheted up to an insane degree, with or without any accusations of fascism, and this will continue or get worse as long as that remains the case.

There's just less tolerance for discussing or exhibiting "extreme" or highly unpopular opinions, nowadays, it seems. Although, I could definitely be wrong -- people like MLK were shot for doing same long ago.

I mean, you're almost there realizing the recency bias. The 1970s, when the Skokie Affair occurred, were arguably the high point for political violence in the post-WWII US.

The problem isn't the claimed actions they want to take, its the dehumanization being resorted to.

And he’s not entirely wrong either, it’s not all rocket scientists and engineers crossing the border.

News manipulating footage to cast aspersions to historical boogeymen is routine. All it takes is one pundit mentioning an imagined similarity to play the edited B-roll.

1. People who believe they could never become Nazis are often the most unknowingly susceptible to it.

2. People who believe they can confidently identify a Nazi are often wrong — a mindset akin to witch hunts, where everyone is seen as a witch.

I ask because for a while it was a common "right wing faux intellectual" thing (think Sargon of Akkad, Milo Yulianopolis etc) to go around asking to debate. Then to not actually do much factual debating or any learning of other perspectives, and claiming that the left is simply uncapable of civilized debate because they eventually just refuse to go along with the act.

I think you have the concepts of fascist and authoritarian confused.

The same way it did for the last 250 years as the world's oldest Democracy. By respecting and upholding our Constitution, especially the 1st and 2nd Amendments.

There are unstable people of all political persuasions and the marked lack of widespread political violence is hard won by years of obeying political norms that include not resorting to violence within political systems.

In the United States there was first a fraying of norms and now there seem to be fewer and fewer norms people are willing to uphold each day.

To focus on calling people “Nazis” and “Fascists” is to miss the wood for the trees.

What happened can't be condoned, but the violent rhetoric isn't just from people being called nazis.

We see increasing authoritarianism and decreasingly functional institutions, including the electoral system.

Identifying the problem is key.

From an outsider, it really feels like there's no middle ground in American politics. You either commit yourself to the full slate of beliefs for one side, or you're the "enemy".

I hope that Americans on both side start to see that either they need to tone down the rhetoric, work together and reach across the aisle, or just take the tough step of a national divorce due to irreconcilable differences.

Part of that is to stop giving a voice to the insane rhetoric, and stop electing *waving vaguely*.

However, both the established parties seem to have become totally incompetent to do that, in very different ways. One party got taken over by people who make public statements on a daily basis that would have been immediately disqualifying at any time since 1950 or so. The other party is so bad at doing politics that they're beaten in elections despite running against those people.

Many of us don't vote either. And our two party systems have created extreme partisanship. I wish it could be different because I do love this country, but our politics are so broken by the two party system, fueled with misinformation through these partisan news networks + social media algorithms (the way Youtube turns one person into an extremist of either side is an example...)

Prior to social media, or the internet in general, it was quite difficult to amass large numbers of people in your echo chamber without becoming a person of power (like a president or equivalent). But today, it isn't uncommon for someone with views towards conspiracies or extreme viewpoints to become a "popular" voice in social media. In fact, one might argue that it is easier to become popular by being divisive. Even though most people aren't on either side. The ability to grow a "large enough" side is enough to become an existential threat to the other side. And they end up justifying their own existence.

I don't know what the solution to this is. I don't even know how to reduce it at this point.

When people say the north fought to preserve the union, I always thought it meant the physical union. But recently, I saw a lecture by Gary Gallagher at the UVA that shone a brighter light on what union meant in 1860. It's worth a listen, search for it on YT.

More recently, selfishness has taken second seat to hurting the “other” (whatever other happens to be) even to the detriment of one’s own self interests. America is not built for this.

The truth is the US has been seen periods of extreme rhetoric and even political violence, including most obviously an actual civil war, and also key periods like the labor movement and civil rights movement. It will happen again even if things cool.

Political violence and assassinations are obviously terrible and should hopefully not happen as debate allows consensus or at least compromise to be reached, but the reality seems to be if you allow the people a stake in their government, passion and anger will be instilled in some subset of those people cause government policies have real world implications, and the end result is extreme acts, many of which are detestable like this one. I don't see a way forward other than to prosecute crimes and let the debate rage on.

The best we can hope for is that the convulsions will be short and sharp and no foreign power takes advantage of our convalescence. In 1945 the Germans learned a hard lesson about fascism, and learned it well; we can hope that Americans will learn something too, and at less cost.

Strongly disagree with "most".

Margins on many recent elections have been so low they'd be too close to measure a generation ago.

I think that's relevant, a hard check on the idea that an overwhelming majority of Americans are getting what they voted for. No.

(FWIW I agree with your other points. I miss the era of Walter Cronkite consensus. Not clear that it was better. But less terrifying.)

I actually think it’s possible a national divorce makes the problem worse. Lots of these killers have not had clear motives or “sides”

Assuming welfare as in healthcare and food subsidies, money to low-income individuals.

https://www.jezebel.com/we-paid-some-etsy-witches-to-curse-c...

Everything and everyone involved does incredible stuff, IMO.

As far as I can recall it was a very convoluted prison-break for someone thought to be dead that included an attempted revenge assasination, distraction bombing of a federal agency, kidnappings and multiple double agents.

Wow!

Let's say it wasn't witchcraft thing but something more widely accepted like prayer session at mainstream church/mosque or something of this sort. Wouldn't the devout people see this as a contract killing? What if the soother says he felt possessed? Shouldn't then he be let go in a religious society?

A comedian put it very well, talking about how some faiths interact with Revelation as if they are, “trying to trick God into coming back early.”

Many of the witches who believe in this stuff also believe that what you put out into the world will come back to you, typically with a multiplier.

Presumably, some of the Christians who believe in this stuff also believe "Judge not, that ye be not judged" and that ultimately God alone must and will mete out punishment with the wisdom of divine omniscience.

None of this stopped people who claim to be witches from taking money to curse a guy, and in my experience, people who claim to be Christians love judging others and their zeal for punishment often seems fetishistic

And with our Supreme Court, who knows if they'll say witches casting spells are assassins after all.

Edit: it's official, he's dead (it wasn't confirmed when I originally posted this). Condolences to his wife and small kids.

I find it weird, at best.

Browsers don't show the page updating, easy to imagine that it's flickering on and off several times a minute at this point.

I urge everyone to lower the temperature. Not just in the comment section, but in real life and in your minds.

If you're on HN reading this, then you have above average influence. If you're working at Google, Meta, Tiktok, X, etc, today's the day you for you to act in service of humanity. Lower the temperature.

Analogies between the United States and specific states in Europe often done work as well as US <-> Europe do.

I think Charlie Kirk thought he was safe because he was a good person. He didn't provoke political division, he tried to reconcile it.

R.I.P.

This is a sad, sad day.

Keep trying. It's all you can do. Also, you can't expect everyone to accept your facts. A few % of the population are going to be nutjobs (specially when there are various propaganda networks around which compound it), and that's fine, thankfully I think they aren't majority.

No, a political activist largely unknown outside of the US is not going to be the catalyst of a world war. I live across the pond and never even heard of this individual until an hour ago.

You might be afraid that this could inflame political tensions in the US, and not even that is a given. The US has a long story of political violence, this is unlikely to result in any major changes.

If I was a betting man, I would bet that in two months time most will not even remember this. Too much spectacle in the news all the time for any subject to stick for too long.

As for lowering the temperature, good luck. Anyone with above average influence is in a position to try and extract as much personal gain from this already.

It kills me inside because I would like to live in a world where this isn’t the case.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/115181934991844419

Let me reiterate. Violence is not the answer for one reason and one reason only. Once it starts and everyone joins, it will be very, very hard to stop.

edit: be

The gunman made his own gun, in a country with ultra-strict gun laws. The Unabomber made his own bombs. The Seattle mall Islamist knife attacker refused to stay down after being shot multiple times.

My takeaway: political terrorists are particularly motivated. Secondly, gun laws slow them down but don't stop them.

> Yamagami told investigators that he had shot Abe in relation to a grudge he held against the Unification Church (UC), a new religious movement to which Abe and his family had political ties, over his mother's bankruptcy in 2002.

> The assassination brought scrutiny from Japanese society and media against the UC's alleged practice of pressuring believers into making exorbitant donations. Japanese dignitaries and legislators were forced to disclose their relationship with the UC, (...) the LDP announced that it would no longer have any relationship with the UC and its associated organisations, and would expel members who did not break ties with the group. (...) [The parliament] passed two bills to restrict the activities of religious organisations such as the UC and provide relief to victims.

> Abe's killing has been described as one of the most effective and successful political assassinations in recent history due to the backlash against the UC that it provoked. The Economist remarked that "... Yamagami's political violence has proved stunningly effective ... Political violence seldom fulfills so many of its perpetrator's aims." Writing for The Atlantic, Robert F. Worth described Yamagami as "among the most successful assassins in history".

I don't believe this is the same thing.

One is an adversarial problem where a living thinking being is evil and trying to attack you.

In traffic, most people are just trying to get somewhere, and then accidents happen.

There's a long funnel of all the things that could happen, probability of each, and total resulting probability. That's no different for being in a car wreck or being shot at.

Now, on a moral level, sure, malice is different from negligence is different from coincidence.

The motivation is not the important part. Sentience is. This person is playing a chess match trying to defeat you.

Consider biology. Cancer is a hard problem to solve, but it's not scheming against you with an intelligence. What about someone in a lab engineering bioweapons?

Do you think traffic lights help if someone goes out with the explicit intent to kill others via their car?

You can argue whether or not that is an effective approach to securing freedom, but that’s the argument I’m most familiar with.

It's not some statistical difference between almost no violence and no violence. It's night and day. Orders of magnitude. Teens walking back from parties through the middle of the city at 1 am with their parents permission vs clan wars.

In the past year-or-so we have seen two assassination attempts on Donald Trump, the assassination of the CEO of an insurance company, the assassination of Rep. Hortman, and now this. That's five political assassinations/attempts in a year.

It would seem fair to argue we are now firmly in a state of contagion which is unlike the situation in 2012 when Giffords was shot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Capital_Jewish_Museum_sho...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Boulder_fire_attack

Additionally, I’ve seen a troubling amount of online sentiment positively in favor of the Trump assassination attempts, the murder of Brian Thompson. The sentiment in response to Charlie Kirk’s murder looks like it might be similarly troubling.

January 6 was mass political violence, and I my unprofessional opinion is that the pardons marked a turning point in how engaging in political violence is viewed; all is forgiven if/when your team wins.

Hyper-partisanship, and choosing not playing by the rules when it benefits you will be America's downfall. At some point, people on the other side if the political fence stopped being opponents, and became "enemies", I think cable news/entertainment shoulders much blame on this, but the politicians themselves know outrage turns out the vote. I wonder if they'll attempt to lower the temperature or raise it further.

I imagine that a lot of the political thuggarry we're seeing today is a direct result of him coming within an inch of having his brains blown out. No one comes that close to death without being fundamentally changed.

I haven't noticed a fundamental change.

US customs are now _worse_ than they were a month after 9/11 and this time it's not just the ones at airports.

I know plenty of people who will be giving NeurIPS a miss _on the advice of their governments_. This _did not_ happen during his first term.

You mean that time when millions of American citizens were placed on the No Fly List with no recourse essentially at random? You can't be serious. After 9/11 was far worse.

I've been in and out of the US several times this year through several ports of entry and it has been hassle-free so far. They don't even ask me questions, they just wave me through.

He and his enablers played that argument during his 2024 campaign as well, but everyone is missing a crucial aspect of it. During his first term, he was surrounded by a large number of career administration staff, who put guardrails around him. This time it's all 'Yes men' and his well-wishers. Notably, no one from the previous admin staff had endorsed him for 2024. That should have given a clue to people. But, nope.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/former-trump-officials...

Apologies, but "citation needed"?

(As a non-US citizen) I flew into JFK earlier this year and did my (first) Global Entry interview. It was the shortest and most polite immigration interview I've ever had anywhere, and I've had a few.

I would like to hope that you recognize that registration of political affiliation is just one data point. Spring it does not make. You know how I got registered as a republican? I got incorrectly registered as one during judge election volunteering.

I am not saying it means nothing. What I am saying is: some nuance is helpful in conversations like this.

Ruby Ridge, Waco, Timothy McVeigh, Jim Adkisson, Dylan Roof, the Tree of Life shooting, J6, the 2022 Buffalo shooter, Jacksonville 2023, Allen, TX 2023, etc.

Nearly all political violence in the US is committed by people espousing right wing ideology, so if it walks and talks like a duck, is telling you it's a duck...

Rising up with your fist clenched right after you were shot isn't something you train for either. That's a natural reaction from instinct.

It's morbid curiosity to analyze it, but I don't think it would have had the same net effect if it was Harris.

Disclaimer that this is early and I may be wrong, but I read that he had a security detail (which seems rather likely). I doubt an attacker with a knife would have had success.

More directly, when violence becomes a normalized means of politics, it doesn’t benefit the bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie can't. The aristocracy can. That's the point.

I meant the bourgeoisie as in the middle class. A lot of idiots think rolling out guillotines will hurt the rich and help the poor.

It won’t. It almost never has in the last millennium. If violence becomes a tool of politics, the rich will command violence at greater scale and with more impunity than anyone who cannot command an audience at the White House.

I actually wish that were the case.

The problem today is that we've scaled up the damage that a single attacker can do. I won't go too far into it, but think of it this way, what happens when someone wakes up to the fact that they can use autonomous ordinance (e.g. - Drones)?

We made a big mistake with this whole "incivility is cool" thing in public discourse. In retrospect, it's kind of obvious that it set us on a slippery slope.

I remain a fan of bringing back the Athenian institution of ostracism. If more than a certain fraction of voters in an election write down the same person’s name, they’re banned from running for office or have to leave the country for N years. (And if they can’t or won’t do the latter, are placed under house arrest.)

I can tell you my stories. But I always wonder what is the alternative when someone like me is attacked? Should I give my left cheek? Should I attempt to be a pacifist?

People who are against violence by all means necessary are privileged because they never have to witness someone’s head roll down. So they don’t know how it feels to be the receiving end of suffering.

I think you misunderstand the point. My argument is that each act of political violence ( especially on a national stage ) further degrades existing society. That ongoing degradation is a real problem and, yes, individual suffering is irrelevant to it, because, society is a greater good.

You may say those say it are privileged, but to that I say that I like having working society. It keeps being us civil. I like it to stay that way.

If you feel otherwise, please elaborate. It is possible, I am misunderstanding you.

Despite the constant braying of right-leaning people, left-wing violence is a tiny fraction of domestic terrorism compared to the right. I think their insistence of the opposite is a form of projection.

A reason that the left has been less violent is that there's a general ideological belief in taking on systems instead of people. That, combined with the general left/liberal stance on gun control, has historically meant that guns are viewed as not an option.

The last decade or so, the left has completely lost faith in the democratic party and the liberal establishment. There's a real sense of "we need guns to protect ourselves."

I'm afraid that we're already past the point of no return.

I don't know about the US, but I've certainly seen stats from mostly center sources support that claim for my country

I'd be interested in hearing your opinion as to why letting the status quo be is a good thing. The path society is on is clearly towards a cyberpunk distopia, than anything that would unburden and improve the human existance of the many.

https://www.kff.org/mental-health/do-states-with-easier-acce...

"Firearms are the most lethal method of suicide attempts, and about half of suicide attempts take place within 10 minutes of the current suicide thought, so having access to firearms is a suicide risk factor. The availability of firearms has been linked to suicides in a number of peer-reviewed studies. In one such study, researchers examined the association between firearm availability and suicide while also accounting for the potential confounding influence of state-level suicidal behaviors (as measured by suicide attempts). Researchers found that higher rates of gun ownership were associated with increased suicide by firearm deaths, but not with other types of suicide. Taking a look at suicide deaths starting from the date of a handgun purchase and comparing them to people who did not purchase handguns, another study found that people who purchased handguns were more likely to die from suicide by firearm than those who did not--with men 8 times more likely and women 35 times more likely compared to non-owners."

The debate is largely over where to draw the lines. Virtually everyone is fine with limiting access to certain weapons, for example.

Sure. But one of those reasons is "I feel very bad and I have access to a gun".

"The rate of non-firearm suicides is relatively stable across all groups, ranging from a low rate of 6.5 in states with the most firearm laws to a high of 6.9 in states with the lowest number of firearm laws. The absolute difference of 0.4 is statistically significant, but small. Non-firearm suicides remain relatively stable across groups, suggesting that other types of suicides are not more likely in areas where guns are harder to get."

This is perhaps one of the worst ways of looking at it. People kill themselves slowly by many means, including alcoholism, smoking, risky activities (reckless driving, etc.). These are grouped broadly under the term "Deaths of Despair" (see: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8221228/). It may be more informative to look at other countries, such as Russia, Norway and Finland, which have incredibly high rates of alocholism leading to a high rate of deaths of despair.

There are many ways to reliably kill yourself. Guns are just the quickest. A serious discussion on the topic cannot avoid this fact.

I cannot give myself chronic fatty liver disease or lung cancer that quickly. I think you know this.

To put it in perspective, California (a state with notoriously strict gun control) has experienced the highest rate of increase of opioid overdose deaths (see https://www.shadac.org/opioid-epidemic-united-states). More generally, deaths to firearm suicide and deaths of despair occur together in rural communities (see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00224...).

Are those "suicides" in the classical sense? No. But they are deaths of despair, and from a public health and policy standpoint, must be approached in a manner similar to suicide.

I don't believe you have even attempted (or acknowledged) an opposing point exists on this topic. Your points amount to banal agenda pushing as opposed to seeking to understand the root causes of many challenges today. This is emblematic of (and partially why) there is such division in the USA today: a lack of willingness to study and understand societal problems, particularly those that are multifaceted and require broader reasoning about the topic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...

The US is at 120.5 guns per 100 civilians, and Canada is at 34.5

I think being ~4x the ratio of guns per capita, (and 30x the total!) has to do something, right?

No one really knows how many firearms there are in the US or who owns them. Just the fact that something like 15 million firearms are sold every year in the US gives a sense of the scale. The number of firearms in the US is staggering, no one knows the true number, and they have an indefinite lifespan if stored in halfway decent conditions.

Federally, only specific categories like fully-automatic machine guns and short-barreled rifles have to be registered.

Tons of guns are not those limited categories, so they are not required to be registered.

Its entirely possible to sell a gun in the US without any kind of paperwork depending on the type of firearm sold, the buyer of the firearm, and the seller of the firearm. I'm in Texas, so I'll use that as an example. Lets say I want to sell a regular shotgun I currently own to a friend. IANAL, this is not legal advice, but my understanding from reading the applicable laws would be all I have to do is verify they are over the age of 18 and that I think they are probably legally able to own a gun (I have no prior knowledge of any legal restrictions against them owning the gun). We can meet up, check he's probably over 18 and can probably legally own a gun and is a Texas resident, he can hand me cash or whatever for trade, I can give him the gun, and we go our separate ways. I do not need to do a background check. I do not need to file any registration. Nobody would know this guy now owns this gun. I do not need to keep any record of this sale at all. This shotgun has been an unregistered gun for its entire exstence.

This wouldn't necessarily be true if I trade some certain amount of guns as then I would probably need a federal firearms license and thus have some additional restrictions on facilitiating a sale. This also isn't necessarily true in other states which have additional restrictions on gun sales. But if I haven't done any gun sales in a long while, such restrictions wouldn't apply (according to my current understanding of the law, IANAL, not legal advice).

Australia: 0.854/100k

USA: 5.763/100k

i.e. about 1/7th the amount of intentional homicides.

How about, at the very least, making it mandatory to report firearm theft? IIRC currently only 15 states actually have such a requirement.

I'm not American and for a long time I could not understand why American fiction, be it books or movies, assumes guns are available even in a zombie apocalypse. That is until I learned the above fact.

The fact that one can steal a gun and have no one report that makes firearms essentially a natural resource in the US.

And as also evidenced by things like "From my cold, dead hands! ... unless you're at an NRA convention, in which case please use these lockers or leave your gun at home, and walk through this metal detector, please."

I think most of us understand the why. That part is not exactly a secret. Naturally, it does not help that the why is a list of multiple factors playing into it and most pick the favorites and I am sure each power center will spin this to their particular benefit further polarizing society.

What I am really saying is:

We should try to cool things down.

Unfortunately, power's usual counter-move to that "answer" is a vastly-more-violent rebuttal. With minimal concern for "collateral damage", or other euphemisms for innocents being maimed and killed at scale.

The arch-capitalist Henry Ford created the precedent for the weekend because he wanted people to have leisure time to be able to use his cars.

Violence definitely happened in the US labor movement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Coalfield_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Overpass

Ford hardly invented the weekend, either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend#History

"The present-day concept of the relatively longer "week-end" first arose in the industrial north of Britain in the early 19th century... In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, a predecessor of today’s AFL-CIO, called for all workers to have eight-hour days by May 1, 1886, playing a crucial role in the push for a five-day workweek."

If you can catch posts you think are unfairly flagged as they happen you can also send them to hn@ycombinator.com. Even if it's a day late they can unflag it, second chance it, and/or watch the comments.

The mods hold a strong opinion that making the moderation log public in some way (so these kinds of things can be seen directly) would cause more problems and discontent than it would solve. I strongly disagree, but I respect that the mods have always delivered satisfactory answers for me when using the emailing process - which is their main counterpoint to the need for a public log.

A Democratic state representative in Minnesota was brutally murdered and another attacked by the same man only a couple of months ago, back in June. How many can name them? How long did their deaths stay in the headlines? How much coverage were they given, and how much coverage will Kirk be given?

My cynical side suspects we are about to hear a lot about "violence from the left" in a way we did not about the right back in June.

That’s pretty much both parties.

It’s why we are where we are.

The better question to ask is, how many subscribers did the Democratic state representative from Minnesota and the other have?

Just sad.

If calling for the military occupation of US cities is at all reasonable, I struggle to imagine what is unreasonable in your world view.

"you know, I could be nice and call him [Governor Walz], but why waste time?"

https://www.startribune.com/trump-says-he-will-not-call-walz...

It was an attempt to quell the No Kings protests scheduled to happen the same day.

...and her husband and dog. The killer also had a long list of other targets.

I couldn't have named Kirk if I saw him or heard about him before he shot and it entered the news. Not sure what that tells us -- we should know more who our representatives are, or know about various "influencers" in politics and such?

EDIT: I saw you initially mentioned two representatives who were murdered but now it looks like there is only one. So even though you criticize others for not knowing who these murdered representatives were, it seems you don't even know who they were or if they were even murdered.

> Don't want to talk in bad taste by going to this so early, but...

Well this is how usually talking in bad taste early starts ;-). It's kind of like saying "No offense, but ... $insert_offense_here".

She had power in MN, but had not become a "national" politician (yet).

This isn't a "both sides" issue. One side has shown time and time again it will resort to cruelty, violence, and severely harmful rhetoric. That anyone here would try to wave their hands around like it's "everyone's" fault is insane.

There was no presidential message expressing sympathy and outrage then and complete radio silence from Republicans in general. And the amount of misinformation from the right was incredible. Even in this thread of nominally intelligent people, they're still repeating falsehoods.

Any expression of shock and dismay from conservatives now is pure theater. The right wing is absolutely fine with violence. Accusations of the violent left is of course a talking point projection as usual.

> Mr. Boelter developed a strong distrust of government, especially Democrats. According to Mr. Carlson, he believed that the criminal prosecutions of Donald J. Trump were politically motivated, and that a victory by the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, would lead to civil war. He followed the Infowars website founded by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Mmkay.

That's about the worst place to get your answers here.

“I am pro-life personaly [sic] but it wasn’t those,” he said, using the jail’s internal messaging system. “I will just say there is a lot of information that will come out in future that people will look at and judge for themselves that goes back 24 months before the 14th. If the gov ever let’s [sic] it get out.”

Now, looks like building a defense to me.

> Federal prosecutors confirmed 45 Democrats were listed, including dozens of Minnesota lawmakers and members of Congress such as Rep. Angie Craig, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and Sen. Tina Smith. It also included members of Planned Parenthood, philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the organization, and several healthcare centers across the Midwest.

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/16/nx-s1-5433748/minnesota-shoot...

> Authorities in Minnesota said Monday that the man arrested in a Saturday attack that killed one state lawmaker and left another wounded had a "hit list" of 45 elected officials — all Democrats.

Nobody is whatabouting any of the violence. They are however pointing out that media isn’t an impartial observer, and that skews everyone’s perception of what is happening.

Anyway someone else responded with citations for the dem hit list, which backs up everything i said except “he voted for trump” which is impossible to know because we have secret ballots but he told his friend he voted for trump. (Citation: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/vanc...)

Now tell me honestly, if the guy who shot charlie kirk turns out to have no known political affiliations but a hit list of republican politicians and activists - you’d be saying it’s complicated?

And then provided none of those supposed “verifications” for what are probably very honorable and honest reasons.

I don't know - how long did these stories stay in the headlines?

A 26 year old man from Irondale, Alabama was later arrested and charged in connection with the bombing. Prosecutors stated that prior to the bombing, the suspect had been spotted placing stickers on government buildings, displaying "antifa, anti-police and anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement sentiments" and had expressed "belief that violence should be directed against the government" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Marshall#Bombing

Man, 80, run over for putting Trump sign in yard, say police - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1rw4xdjql4o

Alabama Antifa Sympathizer Pleads Guilty to Detonating Bomb outside State AG’s Office - https://www.nationalreview.com/news/alabama-antifa-sympathiz...

a man armed with a pistol and a crossbow showed up at Fuentes' home - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Fuentes#Alleged_murder_at...

Attempted Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Assassin Identifies As Transgender; Hoped To Kill “Nazis” - https://wsau.com/2025/01/30/doj-filing-attempted-treasury-se...

10 arrested after ambush on Texas ICE detention facility [..] When an Alvarado police officer arrived on the scene, one of the individuals shot him in the neck. Another individual shot 20 to 30 rounds at the facility correction officers, according to Larson. - https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-arrested-after-ambush-texas-ice...

Last but not lest, there was also an assassination attempt on Trump, though I concede that one did get plenty of attention.

The far right developed stars, stallions and philosophers that are effective in the popular culture no matter how vile some of those can be. There are up and coming leftist Americans but they will need to hustle to develop intro strong leaders. The mainstream figures from the American left like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders are just too lightweight.

Edit: funny how this comment fluctuates between 0 and 2 points. This edit will probably tip the balance though :)

- Nearly all European countries have and support a very high consumption tax (VAT). In the US, nobody would be really for this (although some conservatives favor such taxes), but US liberals would be extremely against it due to the regressive nature of consumption taxes.

- The majority of EU countries institute voter ID laws, something supported only by conservatives in the US. States with voter ID laws almost always allow some valid voter ID to be gotten for free, but they are still opposed by liberals.

There are plenty of other examples when you start thinking about it.

Still, violence has been the answer in many (most?) political revolutions, including the American revolution and separation from Britain.

TL;DW Gandhi knew that to resist the British, they would need a critical mass of people resisting (armed or not). Armed resistance against a superior force is futile. His whole idea of Satyagraha was intentionally self-sacrificial for the nonviolent protestors who would die, because he knew it would stir the masses to action.

I also agree that violence is tragic and we should always take care not to glorify or idealize it, but we should also contextualize it when used by people resisting systems of oppression. As Nelson Mandela said:

> A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.At a point, one can only fight fire with fire

Which often leads to this point, as in Lord of War:

> Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, the Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.

Violence and politics are both on a spectrum and means to the same end of asserting your will. Vom Kriege is obviously not the forefront of philosophy anymore but it’s a good place to start if anyone reading this hasn’t come across that idea and wants to learn more.

Even your non violent examples of King and Ghandi has very violent wings on the side showing society that if a resolution wasn’t achieved by peaceful ends then violence it is. Remember that the civil rights act didn’t get enough support to be passed until after King was assassinated and mass riots rose across the nation

“Should you entertain the proposition, I am prepared to grant liberal terms to the inhabitants and garrison; but should I be forced to resort to assault, or the slower and surer process of starvation, I shall then feel justified in resorting to the harshest measures, and shall make little effort to restrain my army—burning to avenge the national wrong which they attach to Savannah…”

- W. Tecumseh Sherman’s ultimatum to the garrison of this city, December 1864

Sherman’s March to the Sea was an apotheosis of political violence. It deliberately targeted non-military infrastructure.

How long would American slavery have persisted without the march (the war to which it belongs)?

How could non-violence have triumphed in the same crusade?

Violence is sometimes the answer. Domestic assassinations almost never are. Kirk is about to become a martyr.

To be fair, crazy people will justify their craziness with anything. The problem is less what this may be used to justify and more that it creates a more-permissive environment for further political violence.

The Confederacy tried to replace their Constitutional government and the policies instituted by the leaders elected by the people with a violence-enforced new state inside the territory of their existing one and got (justifiably) multi-generationally brutalized for their trouble. The town I grew up in and moved away from was still raising funds to rebuild some of the places that were burned to the ground in the war. That was fundraising in the 1980s.

Every time someone points to the 1776 war as a success story I feel compelled to point out that half the descendants of that war's victors tried a very similar thing in 1861 to absolutely ruinous result.

(On this topic: Fort Sumter is an interesting story. While it was never taken during the war, it basically became a target-practice and weapons field-test location for the Union navy: every time they had a new technique or a new cannon they wanted to try out, they'd try it on the fort. By the end of the war, the fort was "standing" only in the sense that the bulk of its above-ground works had been blasted flat and were shoved together into an earthworks bunker; the Confederates were basically sheltering in a hole that a lobbed shell could fall into at any time.

And while the fort and its northways sister kept Union ships out of the harbor, it didn't stop them from firing past the fort into Charleston itself, since "war crimes" and "civilian populations" weren't really a concept yet.

People very much went into that war thinking there wouldn't be consequences for ordinary folk. They were very much wrong.)

Americans have this unfortunate tendency towards exceptionalist self-image. They remember the Revolutionary War and forget the Civil War. They remember World War 2 and forget Vietnam. They believe when they wield violence it is because they are right and the cause is just, when history shows that, even for them, the victor in such conflicts tends to have very little to do with just cause and a lot more to do with dumb luck (or, if I'm being a bit more generous, "material and strategic reality divorced from the justness of the casus belli").

I agree history records fort sumter as the official start of the war, but I guess I was looking at it big picture that "a war was on it's way" regardless of the singular event that sparked full war.

My perspective on the civil war is "good thing it happened and the Union won, otherwise who knows how long black people would have been enslaved". It would have been nice to end slavery without the war, but Lincoln tried to negotiate to this end extensively and couldn't secure it.

Also, yes I agree the vietnam war is severely undertaught. And in the modern era, Afghanistan.

It's also worth noting that most people don't realize there are more black people enslaved today than in the US Civil War, not to mention other enslaved groups.

This isn't in support of the reasons the ties were broken, but I can absolutely see if say Germany leaves the EU, then they'd probably want an EU military occupied base in Germany to leave said base.

No, it would have led to decades or centuries of resentment between the north and the south and eventually another civil war among those lines. It would have destroyed the union for good. The only purpose of the civil war for the North was to save the union, humiliating the south would have ensured that it would never really happen.

Thaddeus Stevens was proven correct in his opinion that the south should've been treated like a conquered state and the land forcibly given to the freedmen.

The people who want retribution are never the ones to listen after an armistice.

Charlie Kirk shouldn't have been shot. The way to have prevented that would have been gun control.

This incident additionally is darkly ironic because of his thoughts on gun violence: https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-says-gun-deaths-worth-...

To make it clear - I am pretty much politically diametrically opposed to Charlie Kirk, but I don't think he should have been shot.

Because we aren’t Charlie Kirk?

This isn’t to high when they go low crap. This is about basic human decency. It’s also about not turning him into a martyr.

He thinks it's an acceptable cost. So let's honor his memory with his own words.

So, really, it's not about Kirk. It's about me (or us: the folks I tend to side with ideologically).

I don't think this falls under the paradox of tolerance, by the way.

“ Kirk went on to say, “And by the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out … Bail him out, and then go ask him some questions.” "

The response to the last high-profile public shooting was, if you’ll recall, noise in the DoJ about taking gun rights away from transgender people. So some kinds of gun control are apparently on the table.

These people aren't mellowing on their position on 2A; they're instead starting to think "Hmm maybe some of these 'people' shouldn't be considered fully people from legal point of view ..."

All my life I’ve heard conservative talk radio types (and more recently, conservative influencers) chant “shall not be infringed” as a mantra and oppose any restrictions whatsoever (at least, post-Reagan; see the comment down-thread). That old state of affairs has subtly changed.

Appropriate username, though.

Hint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat

I'm tempted to call it rage-bait, but I choose to assume the poster meant no harm.

Please don’t shadowban me.

Kirk both personally and as part of his group advocated for using violence to achieve goals.

This doesn't make him particularly unique, but lets stop with this idea that speech exists in some kind of abstract realm with no bearing on "reality".

There was a guy in vietnam about 70 years ago who made a lot of speeches about what he wanted to achieve and then a few million people died.

It turns out words matter.

Did he? He was pro-gun, but that's not the same as being pro- political violence.

Is that not pro- political violence, albeit at some vague threshold that's hoped to never be breached?

This is an interesting phrase that pops up every so often. What exactly is "political violence" and how does it differ from, uh, regular "violence"?

If someone shoots at me because he wants to steal my wallet, is that different from someone shooting at me because I'm black? Or because I voted for something? What if I shoot someone shooting at someone else? Is political violence supposed to be more morally reprehensible? Or maybe it's less?

I know your entire comment is rhetorical questions, but I'm going to answer them. The difference is intent. Political violence is violence against your political enemies to silence them and discourage their allies.

> If someone shoots at me because he wants to steal my wallet, is that different from someone shooting at me because I'm black? Or because I voted for something? What if I shoot someone shooting at someone else? Is political violence supposed to be more morally reprehensible?

IMO: Yes, yes, yes, no. But none of this has to do with him advocating for guns. He's thinking about defence. He lives in a country where everyone else is armed.

I don't own a gun. More gun owners does make the overall climate of violence worse. But I probably would own a gun if I lived in the US.

> “Why has he not been bailed out?” Kirk said Monday on his podcast of the man who allegedly beat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s husband Paul with a hammer last Friday. “By the way, if some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail this guy out, I bet his bail’s like thirty or forty thousand bucks.” With a smirk, he added: “Bail him out and then go ask him some questions.”

In what universe?!

Maybe he just assumed that would only be the deaths of other people.

Laws exist for this purpose, certainly true. But this fails to go far enough because there is a greater context of norms that govern behaviour in many ways. Not only in situations before the law is required but that govern how lawyers and judges behave.

This is a far more complex problem than people think. To be clear, the decline in law and order is bad, the decline in ethical behaviour from lawgivers is worse but there is a far broader failure in values that will require a generation of turmoil to erase.

I am not one for internet censorship but you look on here, on Twitter, on Reddit, and you read pages and pages of stuff that you would rarely see anywhere online twenty years ago...and this is accompanied not by the outrage that you see everywhere but by a celebration of the intense moral purification that many think we are undergoing. Human nature does not change (i live in the UK so it is obviously particularly jarring to experience people joyfully celebrating murder and also see people go to jail for calling the police muppets...weird world).

> Our entire legal system is built on the premise that violence is not the natural/inevitable outcome of incivility. Courts, contracts, and laws exist precisely to channel disputes, insults, etc. into nonviolent processes.

i think our legal system is built on the necessity of response to the natural outcome of incivility. we have an extremely punitive system in the USA - the entire judiciary is set up to respond to incidents of incivility, not prevent them (no matter how much tough-on-crime politicians like to convince us that stiff punishments act as deterrents to things like murder or rape).

I am always puzzled that people think other people believe the purpose of law and order is "deterrent"...have you ever met anyone who says this? It is simple: some people are criminals, if they are in jail then they are unable to continue committing crimes, if you let them out they will commit crimes...this has been seen in the US, in many European countries, over and over. Further, the purpose of stiff punishment is also so that victims and the public see justice being done. If you live in a society where you see people abuse others without consequence, you will leave that society. That is it. Simple. Basic logic that was understood four thousand years ago but which continues to be impenetrable to people with all the advantages of modern life.

………yes, many of them. Do you talk to real people about prison policy a lot?

> if you let them out they will commit crimes

I guess not, since we have plenty of evidence that 75yo men with one leg and cancer are at 0% risk of recidivism, and yet they’re still locked up.

The probability of committing a crime is significantly higher if you have committed a crime before. This is constant in every society that doesn't put criminals in jail. You seem to be suggesting some interesting new theory that not having a leg is really what everyone should care about...if you were reading someone else say this would you take this seriously? No, a tiny proportion commit the majority of crime, serious crime in countries like the US is almost all committed by 1% of the population. The solution is simple: put them in jail, crime disappears.

Violent crime is a choice.

What changed afterward? I would argue nothing at all. It wasn't a turning point it was a Friday like any other.

I think people invent those realities so they can say their actions are moral and good, and in their reality, for example the Sandy Hook parents are the bad guys because they are part of a conspiracy to take Americans' guns.

If anyone has 2h30m of free time, a good example of a man creating his own reality (and having it crumble bit by bit) is the subject of the documentary The Act of Killing, someone who murdered thousands of people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kJZb2Q1NmE

The director convinced him and his friends to make a movie about their actions (which they proudly boast about anyway), and one scene in the movie has the song "Born Free", "angels" dancing, and the killer being thanked by his "victims", for saving their souls from Communism and sending them to heaven by killing them...

He talked the talk, and now he has walked the walk.

Tells you everything you need to know about WH.

>"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. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe." --Charlie Kirk 2023

Is irony a sickness? It may be unpleasant, but as he says, maybe it's a prudent deal.

Point is it just seems like a giant gotcha and it’s not fair

Of course two wrongs don't make one right, and people can be more classy than this, but it's a totally understandable sentiment and response.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/04/politics/transgender-firearms...

I'm going to hug my family a little tighter tonight. 46th school shooting of the year, and the 47th also happening in Colorado.

This is very different than bleeding from, say, a major artery in a leg. In that case the issue isn't loss of piping to the brain, it's losing blood until the total blood volume in the body isn't sufficient to maintain a workable blood pressure, and yes that can take multiple minutes before a person loses consciousness.

1: https://biologyinsights.com/can-you-live-with-one-carotid-ar...

That snippet is referring to the circle of Willis*, which is a "backup" circuit that can route around a blockage to the blood flow to the brain on one side.

The thing is the circle of Willis is tiny and near vestigial (there is a substantial fraction of the population where it doesn't even make a full circuit), whereas the carotid is one of the largest blood vessels in the body. The circle of Willis isn't nearly large enough to reroute all that flow. It has to be made bigger over time through a process called collateralization, and that's a process that happens over months to years, not minutes or seconds.

In short, the circle of Willis will save you from years of high cholesterol that lead to a huge cholesterol plaque completely blocking off one of your carotids. It won't save you from your carotid being severed by a bullet.

*And some other tinier vessels, but mainly the circle of Willis

But regardless, the specific mechanism of his death is clear. He died by gunshot.

(Very, very graphic death) https://x.com/_geopolitic_/status/1965851790714482943 (not safe for life / NSFL)

[Graphic description] What kind of gun could that have been? Incredible amount of kinetic energy—you can actually see a hydraulic pressure wave oscillating through his entire chest. This was obviously fatal, if anyone wasn't sure. Probably died instantly, given the neurological "fencing" response (suggests spinal cord was hit—never mind the artery, he was already dead).

Ironically the prevalence of AR-15s has made people underestimate the amount of power and damage that most deer hunting rifles possess. 5.56 is like the bare minimum you can get away with to reliably disable or mortally wound a human or similarly sized animal, which is why the military used it because it saves weight so soldiers can carry more of it even if they have to hike 20 miles to their objective. Most hunting rifles are serious overkill for killing their target because hunters want instant take downs, not an animal that is able to stand up and get an adrenaline boost and sprint away if even for just 15 seconds into the brush because the shot was a half inch to the left. .30_06, a common deer round and used in the M1 Garand of WWII, is just under twice the muzzle energy of 5.56.

A lot of the damage of a bullet is this concussive damage, not the piercing damage. Hollywood has been lying to you (apparently real gun experts hate the movie “shoulder shot” because there’s a lot of things to damage there, especially once you take the concussive force into consideration).

For those who are on the fence, don’t watch it. I just did and I regret it. Suffice it to say that the blood loss alone will be critical condition at the very best.

There are many different kinds of ammunition design. Some pierce and punch holes, some fragment and tumble, some balloon and expand, some cause large tears and cavities.

Ballistic science is actually a fairly complicated rabbit hole

Could you expand on this? What does neurological "fencing" response mean, and what in the video indicates this is it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fencing_response ("Fencing response")

Also: smaller assault rounds like 5.56 can in fact do more damage than larger ones in some case because of its tendency to bounce around in the body.

But also, no, the smaller rounds don't have a "tendency to bounce around in the body". It sounds like you're referring to the phenomenon known as tumbling, where the wound track ends up being curved because the bullet loses stability as it hits. This happens because bullets are heavier at the base and thus unstable; while in air, they are stabilized by rotation imparted on them by the rifling, but once they hit anything dense (like, well, human body) it would take a lot more spinning to keep them stable, so all bullets do that. It does not involve any bouncing, however.

Light and fast bullets like 5.56 are particularly unstable and will do it faster, though. But even then, for 5.56, the primary damage mechanism is from bullet fragmentation: between the bullet being fairly long and thin, and high velocity of impact, the bullet literally gets torn apart, but the resulting pieces still retain most of kinetic energy. Except now, each piece, being irregular, travels on its own random trajectory, creating numerous small wound channels in strong proximity, which then collapse into one large wound cavity. But, again, this is mostly a function of bullet velocity and construction (e.g. presence or absence of cannelure), not caliber as such.

I mean, people are watching (I haven't) and wishing they hadn't.

But I also recognize it can possibly trigger anxiety (overwhelming, in some cases) for some folks, even if you don't realize that it might (until it's too late).

Not suggesting we turn to censorship. But at the same time, I guess I'm mostly looking out for folks that may not be aware of the effects it could possibly have (e.g. naive and/or not taking warnings seriously enough).

He was shot in the neck because the shooter is amateur and didn't account for the bullet drop on this distance.

I'm amazed people are still saying this.

Same sentiment. For a lot of people, freedom is more valuable than even life itself.

This time, it was he that fell victim to a preventable gun death. No more, no less.

Political violence cannot be deterred with strict gun laws. Remember, it is only law abiding citizens who are affected by the gun laws. Criminals by definition don't need to follow the law and they don't need the 2nd amendment

This is kind of an argument from tautology that is disconnected to reality. In the real world, supply of criminality and violence is elastic, if you raise the cost, you lower the amount supplied. Crimes and violence committed are affected by committers having the opportunity and tenacity to do so. If you erect more barriers to achieving it, make it less convenient or straight forward to do it, you'll deter some percentage of violence/criminality who just give up or don't make it past the hurdle or whatever.

Otherwise, to take your argument to its logical conclusion, we could get a whole bunch of dumb conclusions, like:

We should just abolish auditing and other anti-corruption accountability mechanisms. By definition, cheats don't need to follow the law, so auditing doesn't catch them, it just imposes extra paperwork on law-abiding citizens!

The current president even suggested doing so was ok, in his first campaign, naming the amendment in the process. (Anyone who was paying attention at the time and noticed this didn’t immediately end his campaign like it definitely would have in any prior election in living memory, should have been able to guess we were about to have a spike in political violence)

There’s no “defense of liberty” justification for the individual right to bear arms that isn’t also saying “political violence is sometimes necessary”.

(I happen to think that justification’s silly, personally—I’m not endorsing it)

Definitely, considering what is happening in Nepal ATM. However, some kind of ban on gun supply (not just controlling them) definitely has an impact on your country's murder rate. You can't just expect 20 million guns produced in the USA for consumers not to get in the hands of people who want to do bad things with them. Really, I would be happy if they just lowered that number a lot (to say 1 million) without any other gun control laws, the murder rate across the whole continent would fall.

El Salvador:

Rate: Over 1,000 per 100,000 residents as of early 2024, with a specific rate of 1,659 per 100,000 in March 2024.

USA:

The U.S. incarceration rate was approximately 541 per 100,000 residents in 2022, with nearly two million people in state or federal prisons and local jails. The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate among independent democracies and is home to the world's largest prison population.

(we don't get a rate for 2024, but it probably hasn't grown much since then)

If a simplistic definition of political violence is targeted killings of political leaders, then this is trivially false. Look at Europe, Australia and other countries with comparable statistics to US and look at the number of events you'd classify as political violence. It is likely zero. The only person I can think of from recent memory is Shinzo Abe.

In the US alone, thanks to no gun control, we have attempts at Presidential candidates, and successful killings of state-level law makers, CEOs, and now, political influencers.

talking about gun control as a form of solution is talking about spilled milk under the bridge. There are 100 guns per capita in the US and even if gun sales are banned, the black market will be enough to supply guns for another century

"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. " - The US Constitution

Neither do private citizens.

What part of "well regulated militia" is unclear? Maybe all of it if you have a political slant, but no literate person who didn't set out with an agenda actually takes the second amendment to mean "any lunatic with $100 and an axe to grind should be allowed to own weapons of mass destruction without even proving they're sober and sane."

It means what it says, not what some gun owners like to pretend it says and the simple truth is that making them harder to get does actually reduce crime every single time it's been tried.

That said, I would argue that the definition should be updated to include women as well.

Madison said "the advantage of being armed," together with "the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of."

Source: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt2-2/ALDE_...

  - A well regulated Militia: noun phrase,
  - being necessary to the security of a free State: parenthetical phrase,
  - the right of the people to keep and bear Arms: another noun phrase
  - shall not be: verb 
  - infringed: adjective

What part of "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" is unclear? If you're going to base your argument on the first few words you can't win against the opposition does the same with the last part.

> Maybe all of it if you have a political slant, but no literate person who didn't set out with an agenda actually takes the second amendment to mean "any lunatic with $100 and an axe to grind should be allowed to own weapons of mass destruction without even proving they're sober and sane."

What WMDs can be had for only $100 that would actually fall under firearm regulation?

Maybe I have a coupon? Is the price really the part of this that sticks in your craw?

>If you're going to base your argument on the first few words you can't win against the opposition does the same with the last part.

I'm fine with not infringing on the well regulated militias rights. Exactly as it was written.

well regulated = properly functioning, like a watch is well regulated when it keeps good time

militia = everyone, all citizens. In counterpoint to the army, professional paid soldiers.

No it doesn't. Even then that usage was uncommon. This is something later scholars made up to justify their position.

Again, common sense says that it means what it says and you don't get to ignore the bits you don't like.

But then again, when it comes to quoting a culture war grifter, you can find a lot of stupid ass quotes.

Gun violence doesn’t just happen to other people, it happens randomly and to anyone, even those who choose not to own guns.

Pointing out the irony that he died because of gun violence despite stating that gun violence is an acceptable cost is mean spirited and insensitive in the moment, but not incorrect.

He advocated for circumstances for which this could happen, he probably just assumed it would never happen to him.

This is no different than many of us who think that the 1st amendment is worth retaining even if people use it to hire hitman or coordinate kidnappings and what not.

Plenty of people use free speech to do bad things. Look at Trump using his rhetoric to get into power. Or outside the US you can see all sorts of crazy leaders gaining power.

If a person is against, say, laws against tobacco, that person doesn't deserve lung cancer. If a person argues for leniency on criminals, they don't deserve to be murdered.

I am baffled that I have to explain this. I don't think you understand the logic you are defending or its consequences.

Kirk felt that preventable gun deaths were an acceptable cost to the continuation of the Second Amendment.

He fell victim to a preventable gun death. No more, no less.

Kirk didn't believe he was going to be affected by the open gun policies he supported and now he died due to not fully unrelated causes. Pointing that out doesn't imply thinking he deserved it.

No, this is completely false, for the general population [1]:

> Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?

> 2024 Oct 1-12: Yes: 20% No: 79% No opinion: 1%

Your next sentence

> The majority of citizens support some degree of gun control reform and yet congress refuses to act.

is somewhat true, at 56%. But, this question involves things like more restrictions for those with mental illness, criminal backgrounds, etc. Any conclusion about this question must understand how broad it is, and have the 79% support of gun ownership, above, in mind. See the rest of the results for a more wholistic perspective.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx

> But this is true, at 56%, with caveats

Yeah, that's why I said some degree of control instead of "a majority supports completely banning handguns".

The same can be said for how we distribute seats in the senate and house. The difference in population between the largest and smallest state when the constitution was ratified was around 12x. It's now 70x and I consider that to be unacceptable in terms of weight of power wielded by those smaller states.

I obviously disagree with you on civics, but what would you suggest? I already think there is way too much concentrated power ( I absolutely do not want it ruled by biggest available mob per given state ), but I think we disagree over why.

Can you tell me why that is?