“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 God-given rights.”

Charlie Kirk
Turning Point USA Faith, 2023

I’ve been thinking about something Charlie Kirk once said: that “it’s worth it” for some people to die every year so we can keep our guns. He even compared it to driving, saying that around 50,000 people die in car accidents each year, but we accept that cost to keep the benefits of driving. And everyone around him nodded along. When children, minorities, and even political opponents died, many on the right were fine with that. They called it the price of freedom.  

For years, people begged for help after school shootings, after gang violence, after politicians were shot. They asked for change. They asked for safety. And too often, they were told, “There’s nothing we can do.” Sometimes they were laughed at.  

Then Charlie Kirk died.  

And suddenly, it’s not okay anymore. Suddenly, the loss is unbearable, the violence unacceptable. Not because the principle changed, but because the victim did. Because this time it was someone rich, powerful, and on your side.  

You call yourselves people of faith. You claim to follow the teachings of Christ. But when it came to the suffering of others, you hardened your hearts. You showed partiality. You measured whose lives were worth grieving and whose could be written off as the “cost of freedom.” That is not biblical.

– “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” — Luke 6:31  

– “Love your neighbor as yourself.” — Mark 12:31  

But even though you expect mercy and help when tragedy strikes you, you’ve refused to give either when the tables were turned. After hurricanes and wildfires devastated communities that didn’t vote like you, some Christian nationalist leaders mocked the victims instead of sending aid. When migrants, many of them Christians themselves, fled violence and poverty, you cheered as governors shipped them across the country as political props. When Black churches were burned, when synagogues were attacked, when mosques were vandalized, your pulpits stayed silent or shifted the blame. You measured compassion, rationed empathy, and decided who was worthy of care and who could be written off as the “cost of freedom.

I’ve had people tell me I’m taking his words out of context. If I am, then what is the context? Because when I listen to the full quote, it sounds like he’s saying exactly this: just as you accept deaths from car accidents if you have cars, you must accept deaths from guns if you have guns. That’s not me twisting his meaning; that’s the comparison he made.

Before Wednesday, if all you had to offer before were thoughts and prayers… if you could watch other people’s families weep and change the channel… if you could shrug at someone else’s grief because it wasn’t yours…

If you could stomach the deaths of others, but not the death of your own, the problem isn’t the violence. The problem is you.

“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” — 1 John 4:20