Bullets don’t build democracy — not in Utah, not anywhere

Charlie Kirk was shot and killed yesterday while speaking at Utah Valley University, just thirty minutes from my home.

Let me be clear: I do not grieve his death. Kirk spent his career attacking LGBTQ+ people, mocking empathy, and defending violence as “freedom.” He told a gay student, “I don’t agree with your lifestyle.” He called queer people an “abomination” and “a throbbing middle finger to God.” He cited Leviticus as “God’s perfect law,” calling for death for homosexuality. He smeared transgender people as mentally ill, mocked them as the equivalent of “Blackface,” calling it “woman face,” and claimed trans women were men acting out a fetish. He said Pride flags should be burned. He celebrated cruelty as if it were a virtue.

Those words had consequences. They hurt kids. They fueled discrimination. They made LGBTQ+ people less safe. Kirk built his brand on demeaning others and defending the very culture of violence that ultimately took his life.

I don’t mourn him, though I do feel sadness for his children, who are now fatherless through no fault of their own. They are innocent. They did not choose his hate. I feel sadness that those in the crowd will have the image of his murder engraved into their brain, for the first responders who ran into chaos rather than from it, for the leaders of UVU who will be blamed.

Some people are celebrating his death. I understand the impulse. I felt the impulse. For those of us who’ve lived under his contempt, who’ve been told their very existence is sinful, his assassination feels like karmic justice. But here’s the truth: bullets don’t deliver justice. They don’t build democracy. They don’t bring safety. They just create more blood, more fear, more broken families.

What I condemn is the hypocrisy of leaders who pick and choose whose lives matter. When Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated, Senator Mike Lee posted jokes about the suspect. When Paul Pelosi’s skull was fractured in his own home, Donald Trump mocked him. But now, those same leaders demand solemn outrage when violence strikes their side. Their selective empathy is part of the sickness eating this country alive.

So no, I don’t grieve Charlie Kirk. I grieve the world that produces men like him. I grieve that his children lost a father. I grieve that violence has become our national language.

I refuse to accept that this is the only way.

Because bullets don’t build democracy. Hard work to build bridges does.