Millions of Gen Z’ers Don't "Feel Bad" About Charlie Kirk's Murder. Here’s Why.
The online reaction to Charlie Kirk's assassination reveals a generational (and partisan) disconnect on issues of gun violence, systemic injustice, and the nature of political hatred.
Charlie Kirk, the firebrand founder of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed during a "Prove Me Wrong" debate at Utah Valley University yesterday.
The immediate, top-down response was bipartisan condemnation. President Trump announced he would posthumously award Kirk the Medal of Freedom. Top Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries called for unity and an end to political violence. Even former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden released statements, all echoing: "Violence has no place in our democracy."
Yet, if you logged on to any major social media platform in the hours that followed, the mood was … different. TikTok, X, and Instagram were not filled with unanimous mourning but with a raw, often jarring mix of anger, morbid humor, and outright refusal to grant Kirk the empathy being demanded on his behalf.
His death, for thousands—if not millions—of (young) people (on the left), wasn't a senseless tragedy that demanded unity. It was a predictable, if horrific, consequence of a system he spent his career building.
Why am I writing this?
Let’s be clear: the assassination of a political figure is a line that—for practical reasons regarding the health of our society alone—should be unequivocally condemned.
But to simply shake our heads, say "violence is bad," and leave it at that is to completely miss the reason why many people don’t feel the same way. It would be to look away from the very real, visceral arguments that are bubbling up from a generation that has come to view mainstream calls for empathy as a form of cultural gaslighting. They aren't rejecting compassion for Kirk just to be edgy; they're doing it because—to them—offering such compassion would be an act of profound hypocrisy.
And if we want to understand how to prevent this kind of violence from becoming the norm, we have to stop finger-wagging and start listening to the messy, uncomfortable reasons for this reaction.
Let’s break it down.
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Idea #1: “Thoughts and Prayers” Don’t Stop Bullets
The first and most immediate reaction from many on the left, particularly from Gen Z, was an indictment of Kirk's stance on gun violence. The irony was too stark to ignore: a man who spent his career vociferously opposing gun control was killed by a single gunshot. For a generation raised on lockdown drills, active shooter alerts, and horrific instances of school shootings, the silence from many of Kirk’s supporters on this topic felt deafening. That is, until it was their own.
A viral video from a young woman, the daughter of a Sandy Hook survivor, cut straight to the heart of this argument. She recounts her mother's experience, surviving the same meeting where the principal and school psychologist were brutally murdered. She describes the lasting trauma and the grief of the 26 families who can’t tell the same story.
Her words are an indictment of Kirk's hypocrisy and a raw confession of her own numbness to gun violence. “I am so desensitized to once again hearing about people dying from gun violence that I don't care at all,” she says, her voice thick with a mix of sadness and fury. She quotes Kirk’s own words, where he famously declared that “some gun deaths every single year” are a “prudent deal” and a “cost” worth paying for the Second Amendment.
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Her analysis is chilling and precise:
"When he said that, he didn't mean his life. He didn't mean his loved ones. He meant people like me, my family, my community."
The conclusion she reaches is a logical one. The only thing that could have saved Kirk's life, she argues, was not more security or a bulletproof vest, but gun control. Her video ends with, “Maybe now that Republicans are starting to realize that the unfortunate gun deaths that happen every year to protect our Second Amendment are gonna be them, maybe now things will change.” Then, after a heavy pause, "If they don't, thoughts and prayers." The words mock the hollow platitudes often offered in the wake of mass shootings.
The sentiment was echoed by another creator who pointed out a glaring double standard: the sudden, widespread outrage over Kirk's death, contrasted with the relative silence after countless other mass shootings, particularly those that claim the lives of children.
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“I sure hope that this outrage about Charlie Kirk is the same outrage that you had two weeks ago when it was baby children in their school being massacred,” the creator said. Others have referenced a school shooting that happened the same day as Kirk’s assassination, which has received comparatively little news coverage.
Idea #2: Violence Is More Than Just a Bullet
Another, more intellectually rigorous line of critique comes from academic and activist circles, which argues that we need to expand our definition of violence. This view suggests that focusing only on interpersonal, physical acts like a shooting allows us to ignore the vast, systemic violence that is a daily reality for millions of people. In this framework, Kirk’s death, while horrific, is viewed as one form of violence. But his own career, and the policies he championed, are seen as another.
As one creator put it, “Violence is at the heart of politics.” They argued that we conveniently ignore the violence enacted by the police, the violence against immigrants and asylum seekers, and the violence of a healthcare system that lets people die for lack of access, among other things.
This perspective argues that Kirk's career was a form of structural violence itself. For example, he advocated for policies that would have dismantled the Affordable Care Act, which would have denied millions of people access to health insurance and, in the framework of structural violence, led to preventable deaths. Similarly, his rhetoric on immigrants and his support for policies that restrict asylum can be seen as a form of violence that directly contributed to the dehumanization of vulnerable groups.
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These are direct consequences of political decisions. This perspective argues that Kirk was a key architect in upholding and promoting these forms of systemic violence. In this view—once again—his commentary on the war in Gaza, which many saw as callous, and his advocacy for policies that would deny healthcare or social safety nets, are not just words, they are a form of structural violence.
Another viral video from an LA-based creator made this argument even more explicit. They challenged the idea that “no one deserves violence.” While on a surface level that sentiment may be true, they argue, it ignores the violent system we already live in.
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They point to the homeless crisis, where seven unhoused people die a day in Los Angeles County, or the tens of thousands of Americans who die each year due to lack of health insurance. They mention police brutality, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and the deaths of Palestinians, funded by American tax dollars.
“We are a society that has normalized and decided that we are okay with children, right, being shot and killed in their schools,” the creator says. “We live in a system that is both normalized violence, and told us that that’s actually how things get done.” The logical conclusion of their argument is that when a figure makes a career out of upholding and promoting this violence, it is not surprising when that violence eventually turns back around on them. Don’t mistake this for an endorsement of the killing. Instead, it is a cold, analytical observation of cause and effect.
Idea #3: He Was The Architect of a Polarized Era
The final, and perhaps most damning, category of critique suggests that Kirk was a victim of the very hatred he helped to create. Kirk’s montages of inflammatory rhetoric, often mocking and dehumanizing marginalized groups, are now circulating online. It’s not far-fetched to say that Kirk was the architect of a culture war that has left America more fractured than ever before. He monetized anger and radicalization, using it to build a massive movement and personal brand. A New York Times article about his legacy notes that Kirk endorsed the "Great Replacement Theory," which claims that immigrants will soon displace white Americans and was a factor in both the El Paso, Texas and Christchurch, New Zealand mass shootings.
The reality is that his entire platform was built on the premise of stoking division and outrage. That’s why it was called “rage-bait”.
In one viral video that has circulated widely in the wake of his death, a commentator argues that to understand the response from Gen Z, one must first look at the legacy Kirk leaves behind. The video contends that Kirk’s career was defined by a deliberate campaign to dismantle the core tenets of a shared American identity.
The commentator points to a December 2023 speech where Kirk "didn't just critique Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he launched a full scale character assassination," labeling the civil rights icon as "awful and not a good person" and claiming he was a "mythological anti racist creation." The same video notes that Kirk called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a "huge mistake," arguing it "superseded the US Constitution."
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The creator goes on to document Kirk’s controversial stances on a range of social and cultural issues, which they argue contributed to the current climate of animosity. He routinely denied that systemic racism exists, referred to George Floyd as a "scumbag," and told a student that "if I see a black pilot, I'm gonna be like, boy, I hope he's qualified."
The video also recounts Kirk's comments on misogyny, pointing to his bizarre rant instructing Taylor Swift to "submit to her husband," and his unflinching stance on abortion, where when presented with a scenario of a 10-year-old sexual assault victim, he simply replied "the answer is yes, the baby would be delivered." On LGBTQ rights, he is reported to have "labeled the LGBTQ community a cult" and cited a Bible verse that "calls for gay people to be put to death."
The video and other online commentary connect this rhetoric to his political actions, which are viewed as a direct assault on American democracy. Critics point out that Kirk "bragged about sending 80 buses to Washington, D.C. on January 6th for people to fight for Donald Trump," and then "pled the fifth" when subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the insurrection.
This perspective, shared widely by many young people, suggests that Kirk’s life was an exercise in manufacturing the very hatred and division that ultimately led to his death. His legacy, in this view, is one of profiting from the polarization that has made political violence a grim reality.
To be clear: Kirk’s death should be widely condemned. Violence (interpersonal or otherwise) should not be endorsed in a healthy democracy.
But the widespread condemnation from mainstream media and politicians, without any acknowledgment of the underlying context, feels like a moral plea in a vacuum.
It demands empathy without asking why that empathy feels like a betrayal to millions of young people and only drives further skepticism and division.
The only way to stop the violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it. And that requires a level of uncomfortable, public reckoning that forces us all to be more humble and aware. If we want to move forward, we must begin by listening, not just condemning, and work to build a democracy that feels less like a zero-sum game of winners and losers and more like a shared project.
But what do you think? Does this make sense and do you agree or disagree with these perspectives?
Let me know in the comments, and subscribe to the newsletter for more.
*Update 9/13/2025: seeing the virality of posts exhibiting the sentiment described in this article, I changed the title from “thousands” to “millions”*
*Update 9/14/2025: I quoted a New York Times article about Charlie Kirk’s statements that attributed an antisemitic comment to him. That article has since been revised because the quote was taken severely out of context. I have removed it from my analysis as well.*
This so perfectly explains the response my 25 year old, 22 year old and 19 year old are having. Things are complicated even more for our family, because the 19 year old is a student at UVU where the shooting took place.
Over 1000 students had signed a petition in the weeks before the Turning Point event to have it canceled and not held on their campus. Why? Because the hateful and divisive rhetoric that is created and stoked at those events is threatening to students who care about humanity.
GenZ has grown up with school shooting threats their whole lives. And when the shootings occur, so many politicians are quick to dismiss anything that doesn’t fit their political narrative. The kids are carrying too much, asked to shoulder too high a cost.
Just upgraded to paid. This post is the sort of nuanced, thoughtful and clear response I've been looking for about this moment and the larger context. As a former faculty dean and provost, Kirk and others of his ilk have also come onto college campuses and blessed another form of violence: microagression in the dorms, the public spaces and classrooms.