An Inconvenient Blog

By Ashkan

Left-wing, LGBT extremism killed Charlie Kirk. It was preceded by a cycle of vicious polarization in America. This is an upsetting reality.

Barring any spectacular revelations, the facts available are fairly clear: Kirk was shot the moment he began discussing transgender mass shooters, the shooter’s family reported that he had recently become “more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented,” he is in a queer romantic relationship with a transgender woman, and Kirk’s spread of hatred was the shooter’s professed motivation.

This is not a conspiracy theory — I’m not wearing a tin foil hat — and I don’t revel in this state of affairs. I wish the shooting was arbitrary and not the product of bursting political cleavages. But let’s just call it what it is, and discuss how we got here.

To begin, while this was an act of left-wing violence, Charlie Kirk’s assassination was ironically the incarnation of talking points from the American Right: directly Kirk’s talking points, even. The far-Left here took some cues from modern conservative orthodoxy.

Gun rights activists have long warned of the day that resistance to an authoritarian government might necessitate an armed citizen uprising. Charlie Kirk himself said that the 2nd Amendment was not about home defense nor sport, but to “defend yourself against a tyrannical government.” He explained that people, communities, and families needed material protection from a state that could threaten them.

The logic continues that the first thing tyrannical governments do, before brutally oppressing a marginalized community, is strip them of their right to bear arms. Ben Shapiro, Ben Carson, and others have made the argument, for example, that a crucial precursor to the Holocaust was Hitler’s disarming of German Jews. According to this line of reasoning, gun rights are integral to any group’s self-preservation and longevity — and without them, government is granted free rein to harass or eradicate anyone without contest.

Well, earlier this month, the Trump DOJ began evaluating ways to ban trans gun ownership, an escalation of an already unprecedented series of policies punishing transgender Americans. This administration has tossed them out of the military, erased their legal identities, and restricted access to much of their medical care. Personal policy views on trans issues aside — mine are to the political right of giving 5-year-olds neopronoun coloring books and to the left of whatever this is — it is impossible to deny the psychological anguish that an already struggling group is having to endure in this political moment. It feels like the walls are closing in; to many, their world is ending as a tyrannical government is systematically attacking from all angles. 

Obviously none of this means that Charlie Kirk deserved to be shot. His murder was awful and tragic. No one should ever be killed for words. But the following three things are true: the shooter, who was deranged and an independent actor, believed that (1) Kirk was a mouthpiece for government oppression of LGBT people (2) in times of intense state oppression, marginalized communities should take up arms (3) Charlie Kirk needed to be assassinated. 

How did we get to this point? How did Republicans lurch so far right on a niche issue that they‘ve provoked 2nd Amendment-inspired freedom fighting from extremists on the Left? This showdown has been years in the making. And it was shaky Democratic political strategy (surprise, surprise) that nudged the first domino. 

Democrats, motivated by genuine care or guilt or both, have worked to advance pro-trans initiatives despite the unforgiving leanings of the median voter. An objective read of the numbers reveals that transgender rights fundamentally lack popular support right now. Even on the most basic level, by a 22% margin, Americans do not believe that a person can change their sex. 

Support for specific policies are even less encouraging. In 2023, the Biden administration proposed Title IX amendments essentially requiring that schools allow transgender athletes to compete on teams consistent with their gender identities. Meanwhile, 66% of Americans believe that sports teams should be restricted to birth sex — and only 15% are on Biden’s side. In 2022, Biden allowed for X gender markers on passports. He’s losing that one 27% to 66%. There are a litany of examples of these mismatches, both nationally and locally.

This proactive pursuit of trans progress was a gamble, but not necessarily an unreasonable one. The bet could have ended in one of two ways. 

Outcome one (more likely): Democrats could stand up for a marginalized group and earn them gradual social and legal acceptance. Potentially unhappy voters would be too focused on basic quality of life issues to contest these positions.

Outcome two (less likely): Some cunning pollster on the Right might discover that there is one obscure issue on which Democrats’ position is extremely far from public opinion. A Republican Presidential candidate might arise who is not concerned with political correctness nor the perverse sociological impacts of his actions. A populist revolt might occur and eventually make things a lot worse for the marginalized group than it once was. 

Obviously, outcome two materialized. It started in 2024 and has accelerated throughout Trump’s second term. And his trans policy has been a standout in his portfolio; in fact, Americans approve of his actions on transgender issues 11 points more than they approve of his presidency overall. For Trump (even if he was supportive of the community before his political career, and even if he barely touched the issue in his first term), sprinting to the right on trans issues has been the political winner that he has needed. And an American government is now targeting a minority with a fervor not before seen in the modern era.

So Charlie Kirk was assassinated after Democrats went too progressive too fast, Republicans seized on it, they really really seized on it, a strong feeling of oppression and hopelessness violently radicalized an unstable actor on the Left, and a shot was fired. There are obviously other contributing meta-factors like internet overuse and a mental health epidemic, but this is the political throughline we can follow.

What happens now? If political polarization is not cooled, there will be more violence. People need to practice more empathy — empathy for 1% of the population that never signed up to be a political punching bag, and empathy for people with policy differences that can be resolved with debate and not bullets. With Trump already promising retribution, I’m not sure we’re on the path to reconciliation we need. My heart hurts.