#FIREARMS #JUSTICE #KIRK

Guns, Justice, and Death: What Charlie Kirk's Killing Reveals About America's Relationship with Violence

Charlie Kirk’s killing should not be the latest proxy battle in America’s culture wars — it should be a wake-up call about the ease of accessing deadly weapons in states like Utah. On one side, MAGA voices portray him as a martyr of the extreme left. On the other, some progressive commentators express satisfaction, seeing in his life and death nothing more than the fall of someone they opposed politically. Both sides reduce a human tragedy into symbolism. Yet everything we know so far suggests this was not a political killing—but rather the result of permissive gun laws and a system that makes lethal weapons too easy to obtain.

Comparing Utah, New York, and Europe: Legal Regimes on Firearms

Utah is among the U.S. states with very permissive gun regulation. In 2021, Utah moved further toward a permitless carry regime, allowing adults over 21 to carry concealed or open firearms without first obtaining a permit. Private sales are less regulated, and background checks are not required in every case.

By contrast, New York, especially in its major urban areas, maintains strict controls: to carry a handgun (particularly concealed), a license is required; applicants must demonstrate a justifiable reason, pass background checks, often show proof of training, and satisfy administrative and legal hurdles. Public carry is heavily restricted.

In France and much of Europe, the default legal position is prohibition of private ownership of lethal firearms, except under tightly regulated exceptions (sporting shooting, hunting, collectors). Even in those exceptions, there are background checks, storage rules, licensing, and strict regulation. The result: far lower rates of firearm homicide and deaths by gun overall.

This comparative perspective reveals an important legal-cultural divide: where U.S. law begins with a constitutional presumption in favor of the individual right to bear arms, French and European law begins with a presumption of prohibition, only carving out exceptions in narrow circumstances. The result is not merely symbolic but measurable in criminological outcomes: homicide by firearm in the United States is many times higher than in France.

Solid Data: The Risk of Easy Access

• In 2023, there were approximately 46,728 gun-related deaths in the United States, including homicides, suicides, accidents, legal interventions, and undetermined cases.

• Of those, about 58 % were suicides (around 27,300 deaths), and around 38 % were homicides (around 17,900 deaths).

• The U.S. national rate of gun-related deaths in 2023 was about 13.7 per 100,000 people.

• Specifically in Utah, about 489 people died from gun-related causes in 2023, giving a rate of 14.8 per 100,000.

• For comparison, European countries have firearm homicide rates much lower: in analyses comparing 2019 data, France’s rate of homicides by firearm was about 0.32 per 100,000.

  
  

Both guns and executions raise the same fundamental question: does a society become safer by making death — whether private or state-imposed — more accessible?

Beyond Guns: The Question of the Death Penalty

The divergence between the United States and France on public safety does not stop with firearms. Another telling contrast is found in criminal punishment, specifically, the death penalty.

In the immediate aftermath of the killing, Utah prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty against the man charged with killing Charlie Kirk, describing the decision as one taken “independently, based solely on the available evidence and circumstances and nature of the crime.”

That announcement matters as it shows that the same legal system that permits broad access to lethal force for civilians also maintains, in many states, the ultimate state-authorized instrument of death. Yet the claim that capital punishment meaningfully deters homicide is far from settled. The best review of the empirical evidence concluded that existing studies do not provide a scientifically reliable basis to say whether the death penalty decreases, increases or has no effect on homicide rates, and therefore should not be used as a decisive argument for retention.

Today, capital punishment remains lawful in a substantial number of U.S. states; Utah is among the jurisdictions where aggravated murder can trigger capital charges.

By contrast, France abolished the death penalty in 1981 under the leadership of Justice Minister Robert Badinter. In his historic speech before Parliament, Badinter observed: “If the fear of death really stopped men, we would have neither great soldiers nor great athletes. We admire them precisely because they do not hesitate before death. Others, driven by other passions, do not hesitate either. It is only for the death penalty that we invent the idea that fear of death restrains man in his most extreme passions. It is not true.” France’s experience over the past four decades demonstrates that public safety can be preserved without recourse to executions. The comparative evidence suggests that the presence of capital punishment in a legal system is not a reliable lever for reducing the gravest crimes.

This is not merely an ethical claim; it is a policy point. If the empirical record does not show that death sentences reduce murder, then prosecutors’ resort to capital punishment becomes primarily expressive, an affirmation of retributive values, rather than demonstrably instrumental in protecting the public.

More than Symbols: The Reality We Can Change

So far, public information does not suggest Kirk’s killer was motivated by a political ideology. What we see instead is a young person, apparently with no declared extremist affiliations, possessing a lethal weapon in a state whose laws facilitated that, someone driven by a murderous passion, who “had enough of his hatred”. The tragedy lies less in his views than in what the law permitted: both to acquire the armament and to carry it, potentially in public settings.

Some will argue that radicalization or ideology are underlying causes in many violent acts. That’s a separate and serious debate—but it seems unwarranted in this case to assume at this point a political motive without clear evidence. To insist on ideology risks polarizing the discourse and obscuring what is arguably the more urgent discussion: legislative responsibility, especially with respect to gun access laws, permit requirements, and restrictions on open or concealed carry.

And when viewed alongside America’s retention of capital punishment in many jurisdictions, the pattern becomes clearer: permissive access to lethal means, whether by private citizens or by the state, does not demonstrably yield a safer society. The comparative evidence from France and Europe suggests that limiting the tools of death both in civilian hands and in the justice system correlates with lower levels of lethal violence overall.

Conclusion

Charlie Kirk should not be reduced to a political symbol, just as his death should not be exploited to score rhetorical points. The tragedy here is not what he believed, but how the legal architecture in his state made his death possible.

The same lesson extends to capital punishment: America clings, in many places, to a penalty that has not been shown to reduce the most serious crimes, while countries like France have shown that abolition need not produce disorder. Before more innocents become symbols, whether of gun violence or of state executions, America needs to ask: how many tragedies are not political failures, but law-failures?