555. The Assassination of Charlie Kirk and GUNS IN AMERICA

 

This will not be pleasant reading. If you want sweetness and light, come back next week.

However, to your great relief and mine, I’m not going to talk about Charlie Kirk today. I’m just using him as a lead-in. I may have something to say about him at a later time, “after the tumult and the shouting die”. Orthodox priest Father Josiah Trenham suggests that we wait forty days for that. Wise words.

However, the shooting of Charlie Kirk leads naturally into the subject of Guns.

Gun Violence in America

Does gun violence present a moral issue? Of course it does. The shooting of Charlie Kirk surely made that self-evident: this young man cut down in the prime of life, leaving his wife and two young children alone. His murder in the presence of hundreds of people, in whose minds it will be imprinted forever, and which is now being seen in all its horror on social media all over the world.  Agree with Kirk or not, God help us if we don’t see this as evil of the most grievous kind. If someone had come at him with a knife, very likely he would have been stopped, and Charlie’s poor, brave wife would not be a widow. Gun deaths are happening in America – some publicly, many more privately – in ever increasing numbers.

Does gun violence present a moral issue? Yes. In Christianity the Ten Commandments have been succeeded (or rather fulfilled) by the simple Summary of the Law: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Surely that includes “You shalt not kill your neighbor”, or stand by while your neighbors are getting killed.

Does gun violence present a moral issue? Of course it does. There are places such as southern Crete where most men have guns, but gun deaths are almost non-existent. They shoot road signs, not each other. Their guns are not instruments of immorality.

Does gun violence present a moral issue? Yes. We’re terrifying our children. “About 1 in 4 U.S. teachers say their school went into a gun-related lockdown in the last school year”… “because of a gun or suspicion of a gun at their school”. Pew Research, April 11, 2024  In the old days we used to practice hiding under our desks in the unlikely event of nuclear attack. But these lockdowns give our kids an immediate fear of being shot.

Here’s what we’re going to do today:

1  A few brief non-controversial comments from me.

2  A few printed statistics.

3  To make it easier: Some charts and graphs.

4  Your task: What’s the solution?

5  A startlingly long list of some of America’s political/social assassinations.

1  Brief guaranteed-non-controversial Comments

Ever since the frontier days of old, America has glorified guns and gun fights. I remember how we little boys used to run around with toy pistols playing cowboys and (God forgive us) Indians: Bang! bang! there goes another “redskin”! My hero was Roy Rogers who did a lot of shooting, but to his credit only of outlaws.

My wife and I watch old movies. In one we saw recently they actually had hired Native Americans, whose job was to let the “palefaces” shoot them dead, knocking them off their horses and what not. (I hope they got paid a bundle for suffering such indignity.) And today… just watch the television shows and the movies. Both there and in reality, we’ve progressed from pistols to military style rifles and sub-machine guns.

2 A Few Statistics about Gun Violence 

 

We Americans like to brag about “American exceptionalism”. Well,  here America definitely is exceptional, exceeded only by a few Central American countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador.

“U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, M.D., officially declared firearm violence a public health crisis on June 25, 2024. In his advisory, Murthy noted that over half of U.S. adults have either experienced gun-related violence themselves or have a family member who has. Firearms are the leading cause of death for children in the U.S. and are the weapons used most often in domestic violence against women.  Leading up to the surgeon general’s 2024 declaration, there had already been 248 U.S. mass shootings – incidents where four or more people were shot or killed, excluding the shooter — in just a six-month period. In the preceding year, there were more than 650 mass shootings and more than 43,000 deaths linked to firearms. Mass shootings, despite the publicity they receive, account for fewer than 2 percent of all gun deaths in the U.S.” from commonwealthfund.org, October 20, 2024 

3 Some Charts and Graphs  

These are from reputable sources. (I checked their record for reliability.) Also, similar stats are found elsewhere.

All you need to do is read the title, then look at who has by far the largest number. That’s always US.

Comparative Statistics: The USA and other First World Countries

 

Firearm Deaths. This includes suicides.

If you can’t make out the details, that’s the US on the far right,

 

 

 

 

A personal note: Data is sparse, but by this standard there appears to have been about one mass shooting per decade during the 1940s and 1950s when I was growing up. I can’t remember any talk about it. Can you see why I’m shocked by what’s happening now?

 

The following chart is old, but the situation hasn’t changed.

 

 

 

A few more written statistics I’ve come across:

“By July 2023, the United States had experienced about 21,000 gun homicides among 335 million. Australia recorded 225 such deaths among 26.4 million, and the United Kingdom about 200 deaths among about 67.7 million. Thus, the United States is experiencing over a 10-fold higher death rate from gun violence than Australia, and over 40-fold higher rate than the United Kingdom.” American Journal of Medicine, April 2024

Note: You can read in some places that the US has a lower death rate from mass shootings than many other countries. Here is an article from Snopes showing that this is a very misleading claim: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/united-states-lower-death-shootings/

I think that’s more than enough. Other statistics show the same the picture.

4 Your Turn

Do you think what’s shown above is an acceptable situation? Should it just be accepted as part of American life? If not, what do you think are the causes? What might be the solutions? if there are any. Surely you’ve thought about this. Please share your ideas in the Comments below.

So long as you respond, I’m going to keep my nose out of this one.

 

5  American Political Assassinations by Firearms

I culled this from several sources with I didn’t document, since this is common knowledge.

I omitted murders of foreign dignitaries serving in America, as well as gang members, mafia, a surprising number of musicians (except for one). I included several recent examples of other political violence. 

David Ramsay, Delegate of the United States Continental Congress. 7 November 1837

Major Ridge, Cherokee leader, 27 June 1844

Joseph Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints and 1844 presidential candidate. 14 April 1865

Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States. 23 April 1865

George Washington Ashburn, US senate candidate and judge, by five members of the Ku Klux Klan. 22 October 1868

James M. Hinds, U.S. Representative from Arkansas. Killed by a Ku Klux Klan member as part of intimidation of Republicans. 2 July 1881

James A. Garfield, President of the United States. 14 July 1881

Morgan Earp, Sheriff. 3 April 1882

John M. Clayton, U.S. Representative from Arkansas. 15 October 1890

David Hennessy, Police Chief of New Orleans. 8 June 1892

Carter Harrison III, Mayor of Chicago. 3 February 1900

William Goebel, Governor of Kentucky. 6 September 1901

William McKinley, President of the United States. 21 October 1905

Frank Steunenberg, Governor of Idaho. 25 June 1906

Sid Hatfield, Police Chief of Matewan, West Virginia. 6 November 1928

Anton Cermak, Mayor of Chicago. 8 September 1935

Huey Long, U.S. Senator from Louisiana and a potential 1936 U.S. presidential candidate. 11 January 1943

William Lewis Moore, civil rights activist and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) member. 12 June 1963

John F. Kennedy, President. 23 November 1963

Medgar Evers, African-American U.S. civil rights activist. 12 June 1963

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman & Michael Schwerner, civil rights activists. 21 February 1965

Vernon Dahmer, President of the Forrest County chapter of NAACP. 27 February 1967

George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party. 4 April 1968

Martin Luther King Jr. 5 June 1968

Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Senator from New York and a leading 1968 Democratic presidential candidate. 15 June 1968

Fred Hampton, deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party. 27 January 1973

Marcus Foster, School District Superintendent in Oakland, CA. 30 June 1974

Alberta Williams King, mother of Martin Luther King Jr., and Edward Boykin, church deacon. 13 November 1974

Karen Silkwood, nuclear whistleblower and union activist. 21 September 1976

Harvey Milk, San Francisco Supervisor, first openly gay elected official in the US, and gay rights activist. 29 May 1979

John Lennon, British musician, member of The Beatles. 5 March 1980

John H. Wood Jr., District Judge, San Antonio, Texas. 21 March 1980

Alan Berg, radio talk-show host, killed by members of the white nationalist group The Order. 14 September 1984

Alex Odeh, Arab anti-discrimination group leader. 16 December 1985

Huey Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party. 16 December 1989

Robert Vance, Federal Appeals Judge. 18 December 1989

Robert E. Robinson, lawyer, civil rights activist, and city councilmember. 5 November 1990

Bob Sheldon, Founder of Internationalist Books, leftist activist. 13 April 1991

David Gunn, abortion provider. 29 July 1994

John Britton, physician, abortion provider. 10 December 1994

Bombing of Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995 which killed 168 people.

Tommy Burks, member of the Tennessee Senate. 23 October 1998

Derwin Brown, sheriff-elect of Dekalb County, Georgia. 10 September 2001

James E. Davis, member of the New York City Council. 23 November 2003

Chauncey Bailey, Oakland Tribune journalist. 7 February 2008

Mike Swoboda, Mayor of Kirkwood, Missouri. 20 April 2008

John Roll, Chief Judge, Arizona. 17 June 2015

Clementa C. Pinckney, South Carolina Senator. 10 June 2016

Melissa Hortman, former Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives and husband Mark. 14 June 2025

Charlie Kirk, political activist, Co-founder of Turning Point USA, 10 September 2025

 

Attempted Assassinations of US Presidents and presidential candidates and some other recent political violence

1835 President Andrew Jackson

1881 President James Garfield

1912 Former President Theodore Roosevelt

1933 President Franklin Roosevelt

1950 President Harry Truman

1950: President Harry Truman

1960: President-elect John Kennedy

1972: George Wallace, governor of Alabama, presidential candidate

1974: President Richard Nixon

1975: President Gerald Ford

1975: President Gerald Ford again

1981: President Ronald Reagan

2011: President Barack Obama

2011: Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords survived, six people killed

2017: Rep. Steve Scalise

2022:  Louisville mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg.

2024 July 13: First attempted assassination of  Donald Trump

2024 September 15: Second attempted assassination of Donald Trump

2024 October: Kamala Harris campaign office shot at 3 times in month

2025 April 13: Arson at home of Pennsylvania Gov Josh Shapiro

2025 June 1: Firebombing of Pro-Israeli demonstration in Colorado

2025 August 8: Shooting at CDC headquarters in Atlanta

Next Week: from the horrible to the sublime: Saint Simeon the New Theologian

Week after Next: Why I believe in Everlasting Life