I think comments like yours being on the internet are valuable. They show what kinds of human beings we're all - secretly - surrounded by, discouraging people from assuming their fellow citizens are good minded and just thinking, so they can prepare accordingly.
Stop pretending Charlie wasn’t pushing a harmful narrative that lead to an increase in hate crime.
Charlie was not targeted over a characteristic like sexuality, race, and whatnot that would make it a hate crime.
Charlie could have very well chosen not to push a narrative that strips 2A from a minority.
He has been fanning the flames for years. He has exploited political conflict for personal gain.
What you clearly missed is that Charlie could have had a life that was different had his behaviour been different.
He was not attacked over an immutable or protected characteristic. He was not murdered because he is white/straight/gay/black/trans. His murder was independent of his characteristics and entirely dependent on his character.
There is no “hate crime” here as far as the definition is concerned.
There are claims from media/reporters that Kirk made statements about “dealing with” transgender people “like in the ’50s & ’60s,”
Also the famous and now ironic comment that "Some gun deaths are worth it to protect the second amendment."
Who's inflammatory now?
Wink wink, nudge nudge.
Trans people must be stopped, for the children!
We all know what his words mean, the veil is thin enough that even a moron would understand it, and thick enough that the law protects him.
if you can’t correlate the exposure of the public to such comments with the rise in violence against LGBT people, I’d recommend some self-reflection and asking yourself what the consequences are if you are wrong.
Hopefully you are capable of feeling empathy towards others.
I think it's only natural to not want children to be part of a group with very high suicide rates or otherwise be ideologically compelled to take life changing medication based on short term emotions and group pressure.
Hopefully you are capable of not only empathy but understanding for the opinion of others even if they fall outside of your beliefs.
Never mind of course that this is parroted from the same people who push conversion therapy, where pastors and whatnot abuse, rape and otherwise damage children in the name of “fixing the gay out of them”.
Nobody is giving children cross sex hormones, so can we retire that argument already and have an honest and empathetic conversation?
If you really think people who take cross sex hormones are doing so because they are ideologically motivated tells me you are too far lost in the sauce. You have been lied to repeatedly and believe lies.
Maybe it’s worth it to talk to some real humans in real life and try to listen?
What Charlie has advocated for.
The more you try to sane-wash the more you show what kind of person you are.
How about we listen to the actual doctors and not a political opportunist whose legacy is advocating for guns right after kids have died?
Ah yeah the totally not politically captured science that made the problem worse in the first place.
Not having a authoritarian knee jerk reaction after a tragedy is indeed the right and level headed response. Or do you also think there should be no privacy online because bad people misuse it?
The good thing about science is that it doesn’t need a “trust me bro”.
Charlie was most famous for saying that the deaths at Sandy Hook were the price we pay to keep our Second Amendments rights. I wonder if he would have felt the same way knowing that he would be part of that price?
On a further note, unlike most of the people on HN, I've met and spoken with Charlie in real life (I met him through an ex and her admiration of him is why she's an ex.). He was even more extreme in real life, but he was media-savvy enough not to let that other stuff be filmed. What you see on camera was the filtered version of who Charlie was. I was, at one point in my life, a member of the Federalist Society. Charlie and his ilk are the reason I'm an independent now.
Yes, 1 of them was a transgendered individual. The other 99% were all right wing extremists, including shooter in the other shooting (in Denver) the day Charlie was killed. (And based on reporting as of Friday, so was Charlie's killer.)
Charlie Kirk did not feel the same way.[1] The political violence today exists in large part because he built a movement extolling political violence. It is supremely ironic that he was one of its victims.
[1] When he was shot, he was blaming the transgendered community for the rise in mass shootings.