The Charlie Kirk Assassination: More Than Just Murder

I grew up during a time of assassinations. I’ve no memory of President John F. Kennedy’s slaying in Dallas a few months after I was born in 1963, and hazy ones of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy’s assassinations when I was five in 1968. (The Newark riots, a few miles from my childhood home in a neighboring town, that followed in the wake of King’s slaying, still prod vivid memories of flames and federal troops.) I recall crisply the two attempted assassinations of President Gerald Ford when I was 12 years old, rarities in the story of American political violence because both shooters were women and the attempts, both in California, were just days apart. And I was a 17-year-old college freshman in New York City when John Hinckley nearly killed President Ronald Reagan. When I saw news of the Charlie Kirk assassination, I made a mental note that he was half my age.

A lot’s been said and will be said about the Charlie Kirk assassination, the conservative activist’s killer, and the political violence plaguing the country from the two attempted assassinations of President Donald Trump to the slaying of Democratic legislators in their Minnesota homes, explosions at in-vitro fertilization clinics, and inside of Tesla automobiles. Jerusalem Demsas, the founder and editor of the new publication, The Argument, wisely reminds us about Kirk that “a man was murdered” and to go easy on the noise, the retweets, the hot takes, the abstractions, and focus on the humanity of a father slain, a wife widowed, and toddlers without a dad.

But not all murders are created equal. The law makes countless distinctions between slayings, not because some people are better than others but because their societal roles differ. Their jobs, not their immutable characteristics, distinguish them. Anyone familiar with police procedurals knows the familiar scene in which detectives badger a suspect—You killed a cop!—and threaten them with the death penalty. We have special penalties for those who kill police, and with good reason.

Kirk’s murder serves as a reminder that, much like Dante’s circle of Hell, there are different penalties for different kinds of slayings—the killing of a federal official or even a candidate, as well as various federal workers. It might seem unnecessary to add penalties beyond murder for a congressional staffer or postal inspector. But there’s a reason that Heil Hitler scrolled on a synagogue’s steps carries a harsher penalty than graffiti on a bridge reading “Beat Michigan.” Hate crime laws, often dismissed as unnecessary, make sense just like those protecting cops, letter carriers, bus drivers, and presidents. It’s not a crime to joke about killing your in-laws, but it is a crime to tell jokes about hijacking while passing through an airport magnetometer, and rightly so. 

Political assassination is the final circle of Hell because it is, of course, an attack on a society, a nation, no matter whether the shooter’s motives are apolitical, like Hinckley’s desire to impress the actress Jodie Foster by shooting Reagan just 69 days into the 40th president’s term. The action is a crime against society, a “fuck you” to elections and discourse, freedom and law, even if the intent behind it is not.

Motive matters little with these federal crimes, which is something to remember. Authorities will likely capture or kill Kirk’s killer soon, now that law enforcement has found the probable weapon and issued a photo of their prime suspect. We’ll have plenty of time to consider his motive. (The authorities only used masculine pronouns in their press conference.) But while the law makes all sorts of distinctions about motive in cases of killing citizens—manslaughter, first- and second-degree murder, and so on—it doesn’t really matter when it comes to assassinations, whether the motives were political, personal, or probably a mix of both. Charlie Kirk’s assassination will be no different.

Our contemporary woes are not the only history written in gunfire. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, three American presidents were shot and killed within 36 years—Abraham Lincoln (1865), James Garfield (1881), and William McKinley (1901). Imagine if three presidents had been assassinated since George H.W. Bush took the oath of office in 1989. The Gilded Age, which our era is frequently compared to, was a time of political violence—bombings and unrest after strikes like the Haymarket Riots—an anarchist slew McKinley; a Confederate shot Lincoln; a federal job seeker took out Garfield.

I’m pessimistic about political violence in the short run but an optimist in the long run. It is always with us, especially in a society as individualistic and gun-soaked as ours. It curses dictatorships but also democracies; the United Kingdom and India, Japan and Sweden have all been prey to political assassinations. But I’m betting we’re not at the edge of the abyss. The near-universal revulsion at Kirk’s assassination this week is heartening, even if the president felt the need to condemn the “radical left” instead of violence writ large, or some are vowing retribution. (I remember some campus cheering over Reagan’s killing.) Political violence often backfires, which limits its appeal and mimicry over time (although not in the near term; beware copycats). Try to kill Reagan or Margaret Thatcher, and you make them stronger.

Part of the reason, even if little noticed, is that the law strengthens us. Its taxonomy of crimes against federal officials and office holders—echoed by state laws that do the same—reinforces the norm that thou shalt not kill but adds an important twist, especially those in the governmental and political spheres. The 31-year-old Kirk wasn’t an office holder or a fed. Still, neither were other prominent assassination victims, be it the deservedly honored Dr. King, or despicable figures like the racist Meir Kahane. But the latticework of laws still matters, and if Kirk’s assassin manages to live through his capture, his prosecution will be a triumph of good over evil and law over anarchy.

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