On Wednesday night, I tried to set the record straight on the often-used but always misquoted Charlie Kirk quote about gun rights being "worth it." It was a face-to-face discussion that led to that, and a lot of people are capitalizing on it in the wake of his murder.
And this op-ed in LA Progressive is particularly egregious.
Now, I'll give the author credit for not just assuming that suddenly, Kirk would be all about gun control in the wake of his shooting. Rep. Steve Scalise isn't, after all, and a crazed Bernie Bro tried to kill him and the rest of the Republican congressional delegation at that baseball practice. Kirk likely wouldn't have, either, based on what I know of the man.
However, author Chuck Yates tries to pull the heartstrings by misquoting it.
Charlie Kirk and others who share his opinions would seem to be saying that a classroom full of dead children is an acceptable price to pay for the right to own guns—that they’re “unfortunately” part of that that vague “some gun deaths” abstraction, that “price” that Kirk claims is “part of liberty.” Being able to kill children in their schools is is a “prudent deal,” as Kirk puts it. “It is rational,” the sacrifice we must be willing to make so we can protect ourselvs against a tyrannical government.
Every shooting has a slightly different motivation, so it’s difficult to generalize about why adults and children use guns to kill children and adults in schools. It’s almost certainly not a fear of government tyranny that motivates them, nor would we be likely to find anything either “prudent” or “rational” in their motives. Needless tosay, we can’t ask the dead what they think about that “part of liberty” that ended their lives and brought only grief into the lives of those close to them.
Chuck is missing the point entirely.
In the debate that everyone wants to quote but no one seems to want to listen to, Kirk points out that we see a whole lot more people get killed in auto accidents--this includes van loads of children, by the way--and no one tries to ban cars for "public safety" reasons. We accept that these deaths, while all tragic, are just the cost of having private transportation in this country and elsewhere.
No one thinks these deaths don't matter, and we universally want people prosecuted for willful actions that lead to the death of others, but no one is trying to ban cars because of it.
No one just accepts school shootings like Uvalde or Columbine as the cost of freedom in and of itself. We all believe we can take steps to reduce them. We just recognize that gun control isn't the way.
And no, so-called gun deaths aren't a response to government tyranny, but that's because we have gun rights that stave off government tyranny, which is something I'm sure Kirk would be thrilled to point out to the author.
Plus, let's recognize a few other facts that Chuck seems to miss.
First, school shootings do happen in other countries. Maybe not as frequently as it does elsewhere, but even non-gun homicides are higher here than most developed nations' total homicide rates, so there's definitely something about America. Maybe it's the water here. I honestly don't know.
But the issue isn't guns. If it were, we'd see a non-gun homicide rate reflective of the rest of the world's, and we don't.
No one just shrugs off school shootings as the cost of liberty. We may recognize that liberty is dangerous, that having the right to keep and bear arms comes with problems, but the problems of not having guns are worse.
Let's not forget that people have been imprisoned for deleted tweets in the UK. The cops routinely show up to arrest people in Germany for memes. They don't have guns, and now they don't have freedom of speech, either.
That's the cost we all face.
We can and should look for ways to keep our children safe.
We just shouldn't assume gun control will do that, nor should we assume that it's a good thing in any other way, either.
