A graphic video of a fatal shooting, followed by a succession of videos showing the victim praising gun rights. Posts calling for prayers and quick rejections of those sentiments. Clips of social media users making dark jokes about a violent event and others predicting the start of a civil war.
Scrolling online in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk on Wednesday afternoon offered a feeling of whiplash as raw footage of the event collided with pointed reactions from users across the political spectrum.
Kirk, the founder of the conservative political group Turning Point USA, was fatally shot while speaking at a campus event at Utah Valley University, in Orem, Utah, as he spoke to a crowd assembled at an outdoor space. The event was the first stop on Kirk’s American Comeback Tour, with stops scheduled at college campuses throughout autumn.
Almost immediately, there were heartfelt messages from the left and the right, and a broad sense of anguish about political violence.
RM Block
At the same time, there were also instant political divisions over Kirk on social media feeds, with posts simultaneously reflecting America’s polarisation and further fuelling it. Even before authorities named a suspect, or any motivation for the killing, some people were taking sides, with the online world acting as a megaphone for a flood of heightened emotion, rampant speculation and, in some cases, misinformation.
The reaction on social media fell into well-worn grooves: prayers for the victim’s life, condemnation of political violence, and sharply partisan takes. Some on the left sent sympathetic messages with notes of support for Kirk’s wife and his children, while decrying the scourge of guns. Other messages called attention to Kirk’s steadfast support for gun rights, including a resurfaced quote from a 2023 interview.
“It’s worth it 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,” Kirk (31) had said in that interview. Other quotes from Kirk’s social media feeds, suggesting that gun control was useless, were also reposted by online users.
Some conservatives condemned such commentary, while also assigning blame for the killing. A post from the Utah Republican Party decried “hate, violence and evil being peddled by radical extremists” while also calling the shooting an attack on free speech.
“Schools and social media have become breeding grounds for liberal hate,” the group wrote. “Enough!”
What might have set the attack on Kirk apart from other acts of violence was the explicit nature of the video of the shooting, showing Kirk collapsing, while blood gushed from his neck. Other videos showed panicked attendees fleeing as security personnel rushed to Kirk’s side.
The shooting comes in the wake of other killings that have rapidly become politicised after the fact, including the murder of a United Healthcare executive in midtown Manhattan in December 2024.
More recently, the stabbing death of a woman on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, has garnered ample news coverage on conservative media outlets, which framed it as an example of bad policies by Democrats. That message was amplified by the White House, which called the stabbing “the culmination of North Carolina’s Democrat politicians, prosecutors and judges prioritising woke agendas that fail to protect their citizens”.
And indeed, Kirk himself had decried the Charlotte murder on his X account on Wednesday afternoon.
“If we want things to change, it’s 100% necessary to politicize the senseless murder of Iryna Zarutska because it was politics that allowed a savage monster with 14 priors to be free on the streets to kill her,” Kirk wrote on X.
Many Democratic leaders, including former president Joe Biden, offered quick condemnation of the shooting. California governor Gavin Newsom, who had interviewed Kirk for an episode of his podcast in March and has recently been using his online presence to mock Trump, shifted to a serious tone to address the shooting.
“The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile, and reprehensible,” Newsom wrote. “In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form.”
The attack on Charlie Kirk is disgusting, vile, and reprehensible. In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form.
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) September 10, 2025
Illinois governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat and potential presidential candidate who has frequently clashed with Trump, echoed that sentiment about political violence, while adding that “the president’s rhetoric often foments it”.
Jessica Maddox, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Georgia, said the reaction to the shooting felt familiar and likened it to the reaction following the murder of Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare executive. The man accused in that killing, Luigi Mangione, became an unlikely folk hero for some, spawning countless memes about his motives and good looks.
In some corners of the internet, there were cutting and callous remarks about the shooting.
But even some ardent opponents of conservative politics were striving to remain respectful.
Jack Schlossberg, the only grandson of former president John F Kennedy, condemned the shooting, writing on X: “Charlie Kirk was assassinated today. We are all weaker because of it. A tragedy. I am thinking of his family.”
This article originally appeared in the New York Times.
