Why This One in 47,000?

Charlie Kirk speaking at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore via Flickr

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Each of these tallies represents approximately 100 lives, totaling 47,000. 

47,000 lives are lost each year in the United States due to gun-related injuries. And yet, when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, the nation acted as if only his death mattered. Headlines exploded, politicians postured and social media flooded with outrage. 47,000 lives, and we barely pause for any of them, but the man whose rhetoric often fueled division suddenly becomes the story we treat as urgent, tragic and heroic.

The other 46,999 deaths are reduced to statistics; an invisible toll that barely registers in news cycles. Each of these deaths leaves families shattered and futures erased, yet the outrage rarely reaches the same fever pitch as it did for Kirk.

On Sept. 10, the White House released President Donald Trump’s proclamation, stating, “As a mark of respect for the memory of Charlie Kirk, by the authority vested in me as President of the United States by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff.”

But this raises a difficult and necessary question: why are we honoring someone whose words often spread division, fear and hate? Kirk’s history of inflammatory remarks makes this especially troubling. 

“If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder, is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?” A quote by Kirk made on Jan. 3, 2024. 

“You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.” A quote by Kirk in regards to Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson made on July 13, 2023.

“The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.” A quote by Kirk on Sept. 8, 2024, regarding whether he would have his 10-year-old daughter give birth to a child conceived because of rape.

These three quotes alone show his controversial takes on the treatment of others, highlighting a pattern of rhetoric that degrades, stereotypes and divides. But one of his most discussed and widely criticized statements since his passing has been his take on gun violence.

“I think 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 said. 

He casually frames gun deaths as an acceptable price to “preserve” constitutional rights. Tens of thousands of children, teenagers, and adults are killed each year, their lives dismissed as a tolerable “cost” in Kirk’s eyes.

The tragedy lies not only in his death but in what it reveals about our societal priorities. Every year, innocent people fall victim to gun violence, yet their names, faces and stories are largely absent from national headlines. Their deaths are reduced to numbers, with families and communities quietly mourning in silence. Meanwhile, a single figure known for divisive and hateful rhetoric becomes a national symbol, honored with fanfare and public ceremony.

How did one of the 47,000 annual gun deaths, a life marked by words that demeaned, insulted and spread hate, become the one we elevate and memorialize, while the rest remain unseen, unacknowledged and forgotten?