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.
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.
However if you are a nihilist, none of this matters anyway.
> 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.
Even if we assume those numbers are inflated, that's quite a bit of influence if someone is influential only on Twitter.
Charlie Kirk literally said that a few gun deaths a year are worth it to have the Second Amendment [1]. I have a hard time calling him a "poor guy" given how casually he seems to accept ~45k gun deaths a year plus ~70k non-fatal gun incidents, and that's even before getting into the dude's actual political views.
His case should end up in a textbook for "actions have consequences" - he called his own fate acceptable.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-says-gun-deaths-worth-...
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 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)
He also lied about widespread election fraud among other things so there are many reasons a person would want to target him
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.
Edit: it's official, he's dead (it wasn't confirmed when I originally posted this). Condolences to his wife and small kids.
America is an amazing country & objectively the best place to live in the world rn, but your gun culture just scares the crap out of me, I get the good guy vs bad guy with a gun argument, but how about the suicidal guy with a gun who has nothing to lose and wants to take people out, or the mentally deranged etc etc Yes people die everywhere, and im not saying I cant get shot in europe but its super rare, to me gun control sounds like a no brainier
On a population-weighted basis, this is not everyday life in America.
Trump was shot surrounded by (in theory) some of the best-trained armed guards on the planet. Uvalde saw several hundred "good guys with a shitload of guns" mill around for over an hour while schoolchildren got massacred by a single shooter.
I can't say I get it.
There was a shooting at a protest in SLC in June[0] in which a volunteer working with the group organizing the protest shot and killed an innocent man while trying to hit someone carrying an assault rifle. (Primarily due to a misunderstanding that could have been avoided.) His intentions were good, thinking he was saving people from someone else who had bad intentions.
I was personally about 50 feet away from the incident. It's hard for me to imagine what a good guy with a gun actually does in practice.
0: https://apnews.com/article/salt-lake-city-no-kings-shooting-...
I find the characterization of the shooter having good intentions to be a bit too generous; the person he intended to shoot wasn't doing anything more threatening than just carrying a gun (as the shooter was also doing): https://bsky.app/profile/seananigans.bsky.social/post/3lrp66... . It wasn't being "brandished" or pointed at anyone.
I can't imagine any justifiable reason to fire a gun in such a thick crowd, when no one else has fired their weapon.
This is kinda missing the point, from my perspective. The reason the shooter thought Gamboa (the guy with the assault rifle) was a threat is because he was walking with an assault rifle in his hands rather than slung over his shoulder. It's the same difference as someone holding their handgun (down pointed at the ground) versus keeping it holstered and it's in how quickly the wielder could aim and fire. It didn't need to be brandished at the moment because it could have been in less than a second.
All things considered, I don't think Gamboa had bad intentions but I do think his actions that day were stupid. The shooter made a bad call for a bad outcome but it still doesn't make sense to pin the blame entirely on them.
Note, that to shoot this man, the police officer also held his gun in his hand. I hope you're at least consistent, and would also say "it doesn't make the sense" to put blame "entirely" on someone if that someone goes around shooting police officers as soon as their hands touch their guns.
The shooter was a civilian volunteer.
Something like this?
> A brutal stabbing at a Walmart in Traverse City, Michigan, left 11 people injured on Sunday, but a much larger tragedy was averted thanks to the courage of two bystanders. Leading the charge was former Marine Derrick Perry, now hailed as a hero across social media.
Verified video shows the suspect cornered in the store’s parking lot, motionless as Perry kept him pinned at gunpoint until police moved in.
https://www.news18.com/world/hero-ex-marine-stops-walmart-st...
- uniform background checks including private purchase
- waiting periods
- red flag laws
- raising the age to 21
How about: "I don't want the Trump administration to be the only ones with tanks in this country."
Are you going to buy some tanks? How about F35s?
No army in the world including the US could stop a civilian uprising of even a million people who have just rifles and the will to fight. They don't need nukes, tanks, or airplanes. If a large enough percentage of people, say 2% of the population, decided to fight a civil war, the US army/gov would fall in a few months if the rebels knew what they were doing.
It would be a guerilla war. And all of the critical infrastructure in the US could be destroyed in a month. No gas. No electricity. Smaller uprisings would be easily squashed.
Now, would this ever happen? Unlikely. Americans can barely get their fat asses out of bed much less do military operations for weeks at a time. Things would have to get incredibly bad and a leader would have to organize it. But it is possible.
I imagine it more a weakened government (but still with a functioning military) supported by civilian militias backing the government, versus various large and small insurgencies possibly with foreign backing.
No?
They'll use it on the next one then?
No?
If the US practially isn't going to use nukes on the US. Its practically not going to use nukes on pretty much anyone.
Some guys with AK-47s kept the world's most powerful military pretty busy for 20 years, so I wouldn't underestimate the value of a few rifles against authoritarianism.
Either of these situations are going to be stochastic and with difficult attribution.
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?
- "When seconds matter, police take minutes"
- "Guns are the last line of defense against tyranny"
- "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun"
- "Your home, your property, and your family must be your right to protect"
Thought I’d provide a follow on. They could make noise, protest, support court cases, criticize politicians, …. All short of actually using the arms. Crickets.
The marketing seemingly appeals to men on the same grounds as video games -- there's some great protagonist who saves everyone with their powerful and timely shooting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwood_Park_Mall_shooting
My man was only 22 year old, no CCW license, even broke the rules of the mall and carried anyway. And he smoked a mall shooter before he could barely even get started, with a pistol from like 60 feet away.
BTW, those gun control laws don't always work in Europe either. Sweden has the third highest rate of gun homicides per 100,000 residents (after Albania and Montenegro). ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/1465188/europe-homicide-... )
It's also true that seat belts don't prevent road deaths.
-Charlie Kirk, 2023
https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-says-gun-deaths-worth-...
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-its-w...
Fact is the cat is out of the bag. FGC-9 can be 3d printed and the barrel and bolt carrier made out of unregulated parts available anywhere with shipping access to China, or with a bit more effort anyplace with a lathe.
Gun powder is more an issue, but even then black powder is easy enough to make and with electronics can be ignited electrically without any sort of special cap or primer.
It can be culturally changed, but even then, if the criminal culture doesn't changed -- now you have a bunch of criminals with guns smiling that the rest of people are disarmed.
Then there are the ammosexuals and they're the ones that honestly scare the shit out of me and need their guns confiscated. Like I'm all for the purchase and enjoyment of stupid shit, God knows I own my share of things other people would call ridiculous; but guns are unique in that inflicting harm to others is literally why they exist. It's the only reason you'd have one, and the way these guys (and it is far and away mostly guys) talk with GLEE about the notion of being able to legally kill someone for breaking into their houses... if I wasn't already a hermit, this shit would make me one.
sure tools make it easier, but gun control didn't stop the pm of japan from getting assassinated.
if people weren't so desperate, polarized, and angry, i would bet my entire life's savings gun deaths would be decimated
There is no but. There are 700x more gun homicides in the US vs the UK, with just 5x the population. You are the only developed country in the world where active shooter response training is a thing. Tools do make it easier, so it should be hard to get them, especially when they are specifically made for no other use than killing people.
I'm not promoting guns by saying this, but that can describe a whole lot of things that aren't even usually designated as weapons.
Nothing is remotely as effectively deployed as a gun is for killing, period. That's literally why people deliberately equipped for killing carry guns.
No, it doesn't, not in the context we're talking about. A quick Google says per capita knife deaths in the UK are 4.9/Mpop, gun deaths in the US are one hundred thirty seven per million.
Europe should absolutely solve the "knife problem", sure. But even eliminating it entirely would equate to like a 3% reduction in US deaths. Arguing, as you seem to be, that the US should do nothing because Europe has a comparatively tiny problem seems poorly grounded.
Widespread gun ownership invariably makes the problem much, much, worse.
The root post's comparison was to someone beside you at the supermarket, rather than "sniper at a distance". The capacity to kill is almost universally distributed, it's just that the vast majority of us are not murderers.
But sure, it's actually one of the justifications for the 2nd amendment. Firearms really are sort of an equalizer, and do more equally distribute the risk to even the most powerful.
With guns, it's literally just a button push kind of UI. That this is controversial is just insane to me. Every 2A nut knows that guns are effective killing machines, that's why they like guns. Yet we end up in these threads anyway watching people try to deny it.
Why does it seem like goalposts keep moving around. Again, the root contention was about the capacity to kill as a vague potential. We all have the capacity to kill with relative ease.
And have you really never heard of knives? Cleaning products? That guy beside you in grocery store could stab you in the neck and you'd be dead in seconds. If you wanted to run someone down with your car, poison someone, explode someone, and so on, most people have the easy, arm's reach capacity.
But they don't. It isn't because they don't have a gun in their hand. They simply don't have the urge or social conditioning to want to murder people. In the US you have people blasting kids at their front door because it's a hyper-paranoid, crazed social culture.
There's a bit of sophistry / No True Scotsman going on here (amidst all the goalpost moving), but the more violent a nation is, the more people start to want guns. And if you're in America and you're a murderous sociopath, obviously you're probably going to opt for a gun. That doesn't somehow prove your point, however.
The problem in the US is far deeper than access to guns. I'm in no universe a gun advocate, but the problems are far deeper than access to weapons.
For an odd definition of "relative" that actually means "vastly more difficult than with a gun", sure.
This unfalsifiable canard[1] that somehow the rest of the world could be murdering with the same frequency that the US does with guns but doesn't because the US is uniquely violent is just... weird. Do Americans magically become knife wielding murder machines when they travel? No, right? So where's the evidence here?
[1] Easy analysis trick: if an argument relies on this kind of "you can't prove I'm wrong" trickery to argue in the face of both numbers and common sense, it's probably wrong.
Objectively? On what metrics? The health and education systems, the amount of gun violence (that you noted) or the state of public transit, certainly not.
The problem isn't so much the tools, but the lack of enforcing social norms across society.
Hint: it's not even close to the number of people killed with a firearm
Guns (handguns, rifles, etc): 13,529
Knives or cutting instruments: 1,562
Hands/fists/feet/etc: 659
Clubs/hammers/etc: 317
I can't really think of any situation were someone done something evil with a knife that would have worked out better if that evil person had a gun instead.
How many European politicians are knifed?
The only one I can think of is Amess.
If you want to have a society, you have to care about and for the people.
Stop this false equivalence argument, I absolutely despise it
Guns allow you to kill 1) multiple people, 2) from a distance, and 3) with nobody aware of the imminent threat.
Of course other weapons can also be used to harm people. Of course no solution is perfect. But it's absolutely incorrect to say "the problem isn't so much the tools." The tools undeniably and irrefutably play a role in every study that has ever been conducted on this topic.
See here for the impact of Australia's gun buyback program, which saw zero mass shootings in a decade after their removal, after 13 mass shootings in the 18 years prior the removal, as well as an accelerated decline in firearm deaths and suicides: https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/12/6/365
I don’t know what the answer is for reclaiming the guns, but I think logistically it’ll be hard to implement in the USA even if there wasn’t bad faith attempts to try to thwart regulation (and arguing that there’s still violence with knives and guns aren’t the problem is definitely bad faith/uneducated arguments)
What do you mean? If you go to any public place in the world, you can get very close to hundreds of people in a very short time. Knife assassinations happen all the time.
I'm American and a frequent international traveler, and I could not disagree more. Almost every other country I've been to has been superior in every way that truly matters. The only reason I stay here is because I don't want to abandon my loved ones.
Of course, maybe Thailand is better than the US in some or even a lot of the ways that matter, but not all of them.
GDP per capita (PPP):
Thailand: 26323, USA: 89105
GDP per capita (nominal):
Thailand: 7767, USA: 89105
Human Development Index:
Thailand: 0.798, USA: 0.938
https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-says-gun-deaths-worth-...
Do you think anyone actually believes that? Or is it just cynical marketing everyone goes along with?
I feel like you were just patronizing the crowd and this is pablum, but the US is one of the angriest, most dissatisfied countries on the planet. It always does poorly on happiness metrics, doesn't do great on corruption indexes, and has a median lifespan and child mortality rate more in the developing country range.
In no universe is there an objective reality where it's the best place to live.
But too much is made about deadly weapons. Every one of us has access to knives. Most of us drive 5000lb vehicles, with which a flick of the wrist could kill many. We all have infinite choices in our life that could take lives.
But we don't, because ultimately there are social issues at play that are simply more important than access to weapons. Loads of countries have access to weapons and it doesn't translate in murder rate at all.
Second, you can walk or drive on a street. Every passerby in a car could kill you if they wanted to by colliding with you. It rarely happens. Stand next to a tall ledge or overpass with crowds walking by and watch the teeming masses - you're unlikely to see any of the thousands of people walking by leap off to their end. Similarly, in life, even though basically anyone could kill you, it's very rare to encounter someone who is in the process of ending their own life, and killing you would basically end, or severely degrade, their own life. Almost nobody wants to do it.
Charlie Kirk is/was kind of an extreme example. He said many things that severely angered hostile people. He went into big crowds and said provocative things many times before being shot. I think in most situations you have to push pretty hard to get to the point where people are angry enough to shoot at you. If you can avoid dangerous neighborhoods and dangerous professions (drugs and gangs) and dangerous people (especially boyfriends/husbands) then you are pretty unlikely to be shot and you benefit from being able to carry guns or keep guns in your home to protect yourself and your family.
For one example, consider the "Grooming gangs" in the UK, where thousands of men raped thousands of girls for decades with the tacit knowledge/permission of authorities - and despite the pleas of the girls and parents for help. Such a thing could be handled quite differently in a society that was well armed. If the police wouldn't help you, you might settle the matter yourself.
Something to consider is that even though one can, the vast majority do not. Typically, the only time I see people utilizing their right to open carry are the exact types of people you think would do that. They are a very small number in the real world. However, they get so much attention that it distorts the perception that everyone does it. I'm certain there are more people carrying concealed weapons than I pay attention to, but it's not like it is the Old West where you have to leave your weapons outside before entering the saloon.
If this is how you think it is, then you have fallen for the hype machine. Yes, lots of people own weapons. Some of those people own lots of weapons. Only a small number of them carry like you seem to think.
Most of the mass shooting events are not these open carry types. That seems to also confuse things
not really sure what comment you read, but you clearly didn't read the one I replied to
Here's the top 10 states percentage wise:
Alabama, 27.8% Indiana, 23.4% Colorado, 16.55% Pennsylvania, 15.44% Georgia, 14.48% Iowa, 13.82% Tennessee, 13.15% Florida, 13.07% (residential permits only) Connecticut, 12.67% Washington, 11.63%
a lot of people in Texas do not bother with a conceal permit because it is already an open carry state yet the vast majority of people do not walk around with a pistol on their hip or a rifle slung on their chest.
It's essentially the same thing, except unique to the US. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but your exasperation is essentially the same as my exasperation, as a non-drinker, that I or my children can be randomly killed by someone driving under the influence - and everyone is somehow kinda OK with that.
It's much higher because of the US unique car culture and car-centric infrastructure:
14.2 deaths / 100K inhabitants in the US
4.8 / 100K in France
3.35 / 100K in Germany (despite autobahns)
2.1 / 100K in Japan
Let's compare with the homocide rate in the US: 5.9 - 6.8 / 100K (depending on source)
Yes, that's half the car fatality rate, but not all car fatalities are due to alcohol abuse.
But the big takeaway is that you have 3 times as much chance of dying from a gun in the US as dying from a car in Japan.
Really? By what objective metric? Certainly in the top 50%, but the best?
You're referring to a steak knife, correct?
I don't. People are rarely objectively good or bad. Good people can have a bad day. Good people can have a drink or two and turn into bad people. Good people can have their guns stolen from them by bad people. Good people can leave their guns unlocked where their children can find them and do who knows what with them. etc.
As a US guy, it still baffles me the EU don't see the irony of the talking points they make in their gun-free utopia at the exact same time that they can't manage the geopolitical situation in their own back yard. Nor the fact that they have to hire law enforcement to openly carry fully automatic firearms in city streets due to the threat of terrorism (Something which is quite unusual of in the US).
There was a day when I woke up, a few days into the trip, and felt very, very light. Just "weight off my shoulders" lighter. Oddly euphoric.
Took me a few hours to realized that it was the subconscious realization that it was extremely unlikely that anyone around me, for miles and miles, was armed with a gun.
To answer your question: we survive it the same way any human being under perpetual stress survives it. We get on with our day and we don't even notice how bent-out-of-shape we are until and unless we're in a circumstance where we aren't anymore.
Does Canada scare the crap out of you? What about a country 22% more dangerous than Canada? Because if you look at only the non-Hispanic white homicide rate, it is 2.79 [1], while Canada's (total) homicide rate is 2.273.
So is it really gun culture that scares you?
Source for homicide rates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
Source for racial distribution: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... (excludes cases where no offender information is known, that is why it undercounts homicide)
[1] US homicide rate * FBI reported non-Hispanic white fraction of homicides / non-Hispanic white fraction of the population
There are people willing to go on murder sprees, and they number in the tens of thousands (or more) if anyone attempts this. Many of them are waiting, nearly holding their breath, hoping that the government tries such a thing. Quite possibly, a few of the mass shootings you've heard of were just those who "jumped the gun" (forgive the expression).
In America, we know that no one is going to come save us.
I'm going to hug my family a little tighter tonight. 46th school shooting of the year, and the 47th also happening in Colorado.
(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).
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.
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")
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.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/04/politics/transgender-firearms...
I mean, people are watching (I haven't) and wishing they hadn't.
He was shot in the neck because the shooter is amateur and didn't account for the bullet drop on this distance.
https://www.jezebel.com/we-paid-some-etsy-witches-to-curse-c...
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?
And with our Supreme Court, who knows if they'll say witches casting spells are assassins after all.
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.”
Not so. People can and should endure rudeness, even disgusting behavior, without throwing so much as a punch.
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.
If violence were the automatic consequence of rudeness, there'd be no point in having civil courts/workplace dispute procedures/defamation law... or even law enforcement protocols in general. The system assumes that people can and must respond to incivility without physical aggression and it punishes those who don't.
> 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.
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.
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.
In my nonprofessional opinion, that is crappy aim. I can hit an apple from 100 yards away, with a black powder rifle, with an unriffled bore, with iron sights, standing up, repeatedly. I would expect a modern rifle with a riffled bore and a scope and a larger target to be much more accurate from a prone position.
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.
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 :)
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".
"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.
The better question to ask is, how many subscribers did the Democratic state representative from Minnesota and the other have?
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.
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.
Let me reiterate. Violence is not the answer for one reason and one reason only. Once it starts and everyone joins, it will very, very hard to stop.
More directly, when violence becomes a normalized means of politics, it doesn’t benefit the bourgeoisie.
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 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.
Crookes basically handed the election to Trump.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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://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 other break in your statistic is people who own guns and commit suicide, and people who own guns and have a family member steal them to commit suicide. The later is far more common. Which suggests that part of the issue is unrestricted access to firearms by children in the home of a gun owning parent.
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."
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?
Australia: 0.854/100k
USA: 5.763/100k
i.e. about 1/7th the amount of intentional homicides.
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.
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.
Many have a blind spot when it comes to state violence. Engels coined the term "social murder" for things where a series of decisions spread across many people directly kill people. Denying people life-saving medical care, shelter, food or water kills people. But that's OK (apparnetly) because someobdy else profits.
The US supplies unlimited weapons to another state to commit genocide. So far in less than 2 years, we don't know how many have died but it's in the hundreds of thousands. For no other reason than somebody else wants their land.
The biggest factor in gun violence in the US is the availability of guns. This country has soundly rejected any form of sensible gun control. Kirk himself somewhat prophetically said a guns deaths are worth it for the second Amendment [1]. His organization is part of the movement to defeat gun control.
I don't support or condone this kind of political violence but I won't shed any tears either.
[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-says-gun-deaths-worth-...
Hmm. Do you know why? Having seen the basic pattern of action of anti-gun people, I have come to realization that nothing is ever enough. They will just keep pushing for more stuff regardless of 'wins' they score.
Granted, some of it is various organizations and they really don't want to say 'mission accomplished'. Still, my point remains. I no longer really accept any changes to status quo.
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.
https://x.com/tpointuk/status/1965864882731102215?s=46
Would be incredible if he pulled through. Looked fatal. Who knows if his spinal system was damaged as well.
He has 2 young kids.
Sounds like you know more than you're saying. So it's someone controlling him or blackmailing him or something? Who's puppet do you think he is?
I never watched him and only vaguely remembered his name when it just hit the news.
Best way I've ever seen it put. There is no "essential" Charlie Kirk, just as there's no "essential" of any of these talking heads. They are a reflection of beliefs from the person's payroll they're on. He didn't even think twice about the Epstein files with the MAGA base imploded, and was happy to say - to a camera - that he "Trusts his friends" to sort it out.
I say no, on the grounds he is no exception and nothing good will come of it. But it's worth thinking about why there are otherwise exceptions and how justified those are.
----
And those preachers who tell the people they can rise in spirit
Even if their bodies are stuck in the mud, they should have their heads
Bashed against the sidewalk. The truth is that
Where force rules only force can help and in the human world only humans can help.
(Saint Joan of the Stockyards) Bertolt Brecht
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-its-w...
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.
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
"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.
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.
Please don’t twist history. Millions of Vietnamese died including my family members because the US invaded our country to stop communism expansion to SEA.
My first thought is how we react to different kinds of violence. There is shock at this, which is presumed (but not confirmed) to be direct political violence. But so many won't htink twice about state violence that will create orders of magnitude more harm.
Denying people shelter is violence. Denying them food is violence. Making their water undrinkable is violence. Supplying unlimited weapons to a state to drop them on civilians is of course violence.
My second thought is the role the media plays in this, including Charlie's own organization. They whip people up into a frenzy of fear to the point where a young woman can be killed for making a wrong turn [2].
Reliable information is hard to find right now but apparently the suspect is at large. There was a suspect in custody but they were released. Watch how the media will blame this on "the Left" or "trans people" reagardless of the facts.
Sandy Hook was really a turning point for America. Sandy Hook showed us that not even dozens of dead 5 year olds will change America's attitudes to guns. We, as a country, will accept hundreds or thousands of dead childrens as an acceptable price for people having as many guns as they want.
The latest information seems to be confirming that Charlie Kirk has in fact died.
[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/charlie-kirk-says-gun-deaths-worth-...
What changed afterward? I would argue nothing at all. It wasn't a turning point it was a Friday like any other.
By non-violent I mean neither 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.
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.
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.
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*.
That's as much energy, words, or thought as I care to spend on him. I hope TPUSA folds and better people fill the vacuum he leaves.
petabyt•2h ago
lovich•1h ago
Can’t find quotes of him calling for direct violence given the the search engines are all showing the latest news, but I’m fairly certain he’s made allusions to it like that “the revolution will be bloodless if the left allows it” guy did
You may not think it’s appropriate to ever call for someone’s death but you can at least see why someone wouldn’t care that an advocate of hurting other people en masse lived by sword and then dies by it
Sparkle-san•1h ago
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/turning-point-usa-founde...
noarchy•1h ago
“ 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.” "
lynndotpy•1h ago
treetalker•1h ago
Still, violence has been the answer in many (most?) political revolutions, including the American revolution and separation from Britain.
jeffbee•1h ago
shadowgovt•44m ago
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.)
lazyasciiart•19m ago
lovich•1h ago
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
treetalker•1h ago
JumpCrisscross•47m ago
Violence is sometimes the answer. Domestic assassinations almost never are. Kirk is about to become a martyr.
thevillagechief•14m ago
pcthrowaway•46m ago
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
mensetmanusman•20m ago
animitronix•1h ago
vlovich123•52m ago