HALIFAX—The ghastly assassination of celebrity right-wing political organizer and podcaster Charlie Kirk last week in Utah raises the perennial question: what has gone wrong in America?

There are lots of theories explaining why the United States has 29 times the gun violence of any other developed country on Earth. There are lots of reasons that firearms are the leading cause of death for American children and teens.  

For starters, there are more guns in America than there are people. And the sale of these guns is advanced and protected by the very powerful gun lobby in Washington, D.C. 

The Second Amendment guarantees the right of Americans to bear arms, even though the founding fathers never dreamt of a day when that would apply to AR-15s and AK-47s. In some states, it is legal to walk down the street toting these assault rifles.  

With flimsy background checks and poor gun control legislation, the stage has been perfectly set in the U.S. for these grim statistics: every day, 125 Americans are shot dead, and more than 200 are shot and wounded.  

Kirk has now joined the ranks of the gun victims. 

Kirk, a private citizen, was shot dead during a speech at a university in Utah on Sept. 10. The irony was staggering. At the time of his death, Kirk was speaking about gun violence.    

The same day Kirk was killed, three students were shot at Evergreen High School in Colorado. The shooter killed himself, and two of his student victims remain in critical condition.

The Kirk shooting attracted most of the media attention because his death was seen as a political assassination. 

Shooting public figures has become a ghastly commonplace south of the border. Former House member Gabrielle Giffords was shot while meeting with constituents. 

Republican House majority leader Steve Scalise was shot at a baseball practice for the annual congressional baseball game.  

And U.S. President Donald Trump was shot and wounded in 2024. The list of congressmen and women, senators, governors, and presidents who have been either shot or shot at is long and tragic, stretching from presidents Abraham Lincoln to John F. Kennedy.

The rash of more recent shootings is partially explained by a deadly change in American politics.  

There was a time when political opponents were just that: competitors seeking political power with different ideas of what to do with it. But that is no longer the case.  

Public affairs at the very highest level in the U.S. is no longer a dialogue or debate. It is a diatribe. The goal is to demonize your competitor, turning them into an enemy rather than a rival. Once that has been accomplished, that person is effectively dehumanized. And that puts them at grave risk.

Politicians of all stripes have dabbled in character-assassination politics, so there are no clean hands at the table.  

But no one has perfected toxic partisanship to the degree of the current American president. He routinely calls out his rivals, whether in politics or the media, as “scumbags,” the “enemy of the people,” or “sick” and “evil” people.  

Making things worse, Trump has also used the awesome weight of the presidency to publicly ridicule and punish those who either criticize or fail to support him. He has even unleashed the Department of Justice and bogus investigations to create an air of criminality around his opponents.

Among a host of others, Trump has gone after Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Nancy Pelosi. But he doesn’t limit his attacks to political figures.  

Trump has also publicly attacked celebrities who don’t support him, from actors Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, to musicians Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift. Some of his targets have said that death threats followed the president’s enunciations.  

Even when he was lamenting Kirk’s dreadful murder, and posthumously singing his praises, Trump couldn’t help turning it into a bitter, partisan moment.  

He called the Democrats terrorists, directly blaming them for Kirk’s assassination. His logic? The Democrats had whipped up public hatred by comparing MAGA supporters like Kirk to Nazis, and the worst mass murderers on the planet. This from the same president who has made a political cottage industry out of trashing his opponents in the most malevolent words he could find.

Could Trump’s hateful rhetoric and unfounded allegations trigger violence against his targets? Of course they could. And Trump himself has already set the example by his clear willingness to carry out violence without adhering to any guardrails.  

The Trump government recently gave the green light to the American military to blow up a Venezuelan boat in international waters, killing all 11 people on board. Without producing any evidence, the U.S. Administration justified the killing by claiming that the crew members were members of a drug cartel on their way to the U.S. to terrorize Americans. Like his political opponents, they were bad people.

The last time I looked, the penalty for drug importation wasn’t summary execution by the U.S. military without charges or any due process.  

When it was pointed out to Vice-President J.D. Vance that what the U.S. military had cone amounted to a “war crime,” his answer declared exactly where the Trump administration is on the rule of law.  

“I don’t give a shit what you call it,” Vance told an interviewer. He went on to insist that killing everyone on the boat was the “best possible” use of his country’s military.

Starting with Trump and Vance, U.S. political leaders will have to do a lot better than that if they are ever to curb the scourge of gun violence in America. Part of that is better gun laws, including banning assault rifles.  Part of it is better background checks to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.   

And a real part of it is to conduct the national political conversation without feeling the need to vilify, demonize, and dehumanize your rivals. 

Because when you do those three things, in a country that for now is trigger-happy, you all but guarantee more Charlie Kirks. One more is too many.

Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist.

The Hill Times

 

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