Standing Against Violence, Standing for Democracy

On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University. I need to be clear from the outset: I do not agree with Charlie Kirk’s ideology, his rhetoric, or the policies he so often championed. Many of his views, in my understanding, were harmful and divisive.

And yet — in a democracy, he had the right to hold and express those views. That right is fundamental. Disagreement is not a license to kill. Violence is not an argument; it is an annihilation. When we choose murder over debate, we abandon democracy itself.

Murder Silences Us All

Kirk’s assassination is not just an attack on one man. It is an attack on the fragile fabric of public discourse. Violence sends a single chilling message: that persuasion has failed, and only force remains. That message corrodes democracy and endangers us all, regardless of political affiliation.

If we normalize responding to speech with bullets, then none of us — left, right, or center — are safe.

Guns and the Urgency of Reform

This tragedy again highlights a crisis we have refused to face: America’s epidemic of gun violence. Every shooting, whether political or random, chips away at our collective safety. Every murder makes the world smaller, colder, more afraid.

I am not calling for the end of responsible gun ownership. But I am calling for common-sense laws that honor both liberty and life:

Universal background checks to keep weapons out of dangerous hands.

Red flag laws to intervene when someone poses a clear risk.

Safe storage requirements to prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands.

Waiting periods to cool moments of rage before they turn irreversible.

These are not radical ideas. They are life-preserving ones.

Choosing Life Over Violence

As a Franciscan Clarean, my faith teaches me that every human life bears the image of God. That truth applies to our friends and to our enemies, to those we admire and to those we cannot stand. It applied to Charlie Kirk. It applies to those who mourn him. It applies to every life cut short by a trigger pulled too soon.

So today I stand — not with Charlie Kirk’s politics, but with his right to live, to speak, to be heard without fear of being gunned down. I stand against murder, against gun violence, and against the lie that death is the answer to disagreement.

A Prayer for Us All

I pray for Charlie Kirk’s family in their grief.
I pray for his supporters, shaken and afraid.
I pray for a nation that seems to be forgetting how to disagree without killing.
And I pray that we will finally have the courage to enact sensible gun reform, so that fewer lives end in tragedy.

May we learn to listen, to argue, to resist — but never to murder.
May we remember that democracy lives only when we choose life over death.