Charlie Kirk and America’s Fragile Fabric

 

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Charlie Kirk and America’s Fragile Fabric

Sept. 11, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/opinion/letters/charlie-kirk-assassination.html

 

To the Editor:

 

Re “Charlie Kirk Dies After Being Shot on a Utah Campus” (front page, Sept. 11):

 

The news and commentary that so quickly followed the assassination of Charlie Kirk capture what makes this moment so troubling. The immediate calls for vengeance on the right, and even celebration by some voices on the left, show how fragile our civic fabric has become.

 

Political violence does more than claim lives. It corrodes the trust that allows democracy to function and chills the willingness of citizens to enter the public square. The viral spread of violent images deepens the trauma, planting fear far beyond the scene itself.

 

For me, this event felt like a turning point. While scholars debate whether diverse democracies can endure, what is clear is that tolerating violence — whether by action or by silence — will make our democracy unlivable.

 

We must reject political violence in all its forms if we are to preserve even the possibility of democratic life together.

 

Camerino I. Salazar

San Antonio

 

To the Editor:

 

The killing of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy, and it might never have happened if we had serious gun control in this country.

 

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On the same day that Mr. Kirk was killed, two students were critically wounded at a Colorado high school; the suspect in the shooting then took his own life. A few days earlier another potential school shooting was prevented in Washington State when the police raided the home of a 13-year-old who had been making threats online and found 23 guns in the house. All this not long after a shooter opened fire at a morning Mass at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, killing two children and wounding some 20 others.

 

In 2023, Mr. Kirk said, “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”

 

Sadly, Charlie Kirk paid that cost with his life.

 

Alix Wilber

Seattle

 

To the Editor:

 

In one of my classes, I showed the Zapruder film of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Most of my students have seen such graphic violence only in movies and video games. It is still a horrific piece of film.

 

On Wednesday they all saw (on their preferred social media platforms) the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It was also horrific to watch.

 

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We will hear the same rhetoric on both sides of the aisle in the wake of this murder. “It’s the guns,” liberals will cry. Conservatives will retort: “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”

 

And nothing will change, because we are asking the wrong questions in our echo chambers.

 

We can post our memes on social media about the number of gun deaths we have had in America this year, or wave our Second Amendment placards. Nothing will change until we look at the real beneficiaries of such violence. And they certainly won’t change if we — on both sides of the debate — remain entrenched in our ideological camps.

 

(Rev.) John Tamilio III

Beverly, Mass.

The writer is a professor of philosophy at Salem State University.

 

To the Editor:

 

I am a moderate Democrat who has voted for the D column in every election since I returned from the Vietnam War in 1969. Charlie Kirk’s political stance was not one I admired. His close affiliation with President Trump further alienated me from his politics.

 

But his assassination Wednesday made me sick to my stomach. Likewise, I abhor what this president and his Republican supporters in the House and the Senate are doing to my country.

 

But when the assassination attempt against Mr. Trump happened in Butler, Pa., last year, I was both aghast and infuriated. Political change in America should be the result of the ballot box, not the ammunition box.

 

In a country where there are more guns than people, I am numb as each day’s news cycle brings me more horrific stories of school shootings, political assassinations and crimes involving firearms. We cannot appear to find a middle ground on reducing gun violence, and we are more divided than ever. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

 

As we mark 24 years since the Sept. 11 attacks, we should remind ourselves of our country’s motto: E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

 

Len DiSesa

Dresher, Pa.

 

To the Editor:

 

I am from Europe. My first thought after yet another shooting tragedy in the United States is: Why are you surprised, America? The sacrosanct right to bear arms in this country allows, even abets, this kind of abomination.

 

Exactly what kind of good comes out of it? The restrictions on buying alcohol seem stricter. The whole thing boggles the mind and kills way too many innocent people. It is a blemish on this otherwise extraordinary nation.

 

Catherine Luborsky

Far Hills, N.J.