Charlie Kirk this summer. (Image: Gage Skidmore – https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/54670961811/, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=172612805)

The moral complexity of what has happened in the past 24 hours is staggering. And that’s okay, if we learn from it.

A highly polarizing figure who has said awful things about people without the ability to answer back was peacefully addressing a crowd in a public forum. A gunman murdered him.

First, it is important to understand what we don’t know, which is just about everything. No suspect has been arrested. We have no idea why he or she murdered Kirk. We also don’t know if we can trust the government to give us accurate information. There already was one unattributed story released pointing to the shooter being transexual. It turned out to be inaccurate and quite possibly an intentional lie.

The moral complexities will change if and when those facts are known. And, if the murderer was from the left, they will become greater and the situation far more dangerous.

All that notwithstanding, the person responsible must be tried and, if convicted, punished according to the applicable laws. That’s unmistakable. Violence is morally, ethically, legally and religiously wrong. It has no place in civil society. Period. Society needs to be strong enough to convince its citizens that hate speech is wrong. Killing the speaker gives him or her a stronger voice, albeit from the grave.

Kirk had done much damage in his life, but his misdeeds were verbal. As far as I know he never physically hurt anyone. He did not deserve to die.

The Hard Part

Now comes the hard part: Kirk had said that deaths by gun violence was “worth it” and would “unfortunately” lead to deaths but was the cost of protecting the Second Amendment. He stated position was that his own killing was a price that had to be paid.

He was wrong. All freedoms enunciated in the Constitution are accompanied by fine print that limits them where it makes sense. The go-to example is that we have First Amendment rights, but we can’t scream “fire” in a crowded theatre. Those on the right battling to ease controls on weapons are wrong. There are ways to follow the Second Amendment and at the same time protect the public. And the amendment itself is vague and confusing.

The right has spent decades denying this simple reality and won’t deal with nuance: Do you arm teachers? What level of investigation must be done for somebody buying a gun? Do you seed gunpowder to it can be traced? Do you put fingerprint security on weapons so only authorized people can use them? What types of weapons are illegal due to their lethality? These are important questions, but they can be worked out if both sides argue in good faith.

And let’s face it: If the Founding Fathers came back to life and call us idiots for not managing these weapons better.

There are dozens of shootings every year. Indeed, a kid at a Denver-area school shot two classmates and killed himself even as the horror in Utah was playing out. If there was moral outrage about that, I missed it.

The difference between Kirk and the most other victims of gun violence is that Kirk put himself in the arena. Perhaps he was brave. Perhaps he was in denial. Perhaps he had a martyr complex. But unlike the kids and staff at countless schools, he knew he was playing with fire, both literally and figuratively.

The biggest take away from the past 24 hours is the selective empathy of the right. They rightfully say that what happened to Kirk was awful. I totally agree. Nobody short of Hitler deserves to end that way. But where their emotions when it happens to a little kid? Somebody quietly doing their nondescript job?

I work a couple of days a week in the public schools in New York City. Yesterday I was helping take care of about a dozen preschoolers. The thought that some idiot could bolt through the door and do terrible things to these kids is terrifying and appalling. It is almost appalling that somebody would say it is the price we have to pay to have a free society. It isn’t.

Please vote so that the next Charlie Kirk lives until 90.