# Rationally speaking, is the murder of Charlie Kirk worth worrying over more than the murders of kids in schools? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 11, 2025, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949 "2025-09-11T14:44:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2025, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/61 "2025-09-13T22:01:17Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > It’s more worrying in that we don’t want to be a country that legitimizes political violence against people we disagree with, regardless of their position. Otherwise then it’s simply a matter of might makes right. We’re the country that has legitimized an attack on the seat of our government in an attempt to overturn an election. We’re a country where a candidate for president encouraged supporters in the audience to attack those they disagreed with. We’re a country where elected politicians are murdered already. Now the chickens are coming home to roost, and some people are finally getting upset. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2025, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/62 "2025-09-13T22:15:30Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > There were no major consequences to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. The problem was the powder keg, and if it hadn’t been Ferdinand, it’d have been something else, probably within a matter of months at most. Saying that there were no major consequences to the dam bursting because its composition was so shoddy that anything might have broken it doesn’t give much consolation to the drowned villagers. We don’t yet know whether Kirk was the spark that set off the powder, but we certainly know that people have been piling kegs. That worries me, and I hope it worries others as well. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2025, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/63 "2025-09-14T04:54:14Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > We’re the country that has legitimized an attack on the seat of our government in an attempt to overturn an election. We’re a country where a candidate for president encouraged supporters in the audience to attack those they disagreed with. We’re a country where elected politicians are murdered already. Yeah. The violence _being all one way_ hasn’t made it any less violent. We’ve had “legitimized political violence” for decades, it’s just been repeated one-sided attacks by the Right on everyone else. But only now when a right winger is killed do people start wringing their hands over it. The hypocrisy is palpable. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2025, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/64 "2025-09-14T13:42:11Z")
> [@Cmyers1980](#): > > Political violence is a much greater threat and can pose a much greater threat to society as a whole than 50-100 students getting killed every year at schools for any number of reasons and in any number of circumstances. Just because one tugs at the heartstrings more doesn’t mean it poses the same systemic and existential threat to society as a whole. In fact the “worry” about school shooting is mostly because of the heartstrings impact; while the much larger numbers of kids killed by guns every day by daily murders, suicides, etc., that should be the _rational_ reason for smarter gun regulations, don’t worry as many as much. That said I am yet to be fully convinced Kirk’s murder _was_ political violence. It seems to me to be at least as likely that his killer was more akin to a school shooter - a person who experience some mental health decline and/or delusions enabled by gun availability to copycat a violent act. Neither am I convinced that there is a powder keg or a dam ready to burst. A specific sort of crazy trying to kill a political celebrity with no specific political intention is a long tradition. John Hinkley Jr immediately pops into mind. It doesn’t make the overall story of violence responses being a more common thing, almost normalized, less worrying though. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2025, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/65 "2025-09-14T16:52:55Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > For what it’s worth, Gavrilo Princip accomplished his goal of removing Austria’s boot from Bosnia’s neck. Of course, millions of people who couldn’t have even found Bosnia on a map had to die first. And Bosnia’s neck has been boot-free ever since. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2025, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/66 "2025-09-15T11:40:16Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I think there’s conflation of a few things in this thread. > > Yes I care more about the life of an innocent school student than someone who has chosen to have odious views including on things like political violence and gun control. > > But yes, in a country where mass shootings are pretty common, the latter is more consequential right now. It will likely spur further political violence, more of a police state and excuses to erode human rights. > > It’s kind of like when there’s a terrorist attack and people complain saying more people died in car crashes that day, or whatever. How consequential an event is depends on many factors; it’s not just a body count or saying which lives are more “valuable”. This. I have a child in school, and the school shootings are obviously many times worse. I want to see Charlie Kirk’s killer punished, but it’s nowhere close to the hatred and contempt I feel towards school shooters. But this shooting has the potential to be way more consequential politically. > [@Czarcasm](#): > > A message sent by a single person, as opposed to the multitudes of people, some of them elected officials, that say the same thing about the views held by the left. Did you see what I posted about what Trump said hypocritically? No, not by a single person. Elected Democrats have been doing the right (and for them self-interested) thing and condemning the assassination. But social media means conservatives can see multitudes of liberals celebrating it. People they know and people they don’t. My own husband isn’t political at all, but he told me many of his friends were celebrating the murder online, and he doesn’t see them the same way now. (These are Brits, who aren’t even affected by what’s going on in America. They’d just heard that the guy had objectionable views and was influential on the right.) Conservatives knew the left thought of them as ‘deplorables’. Now they believe the left wants them dead. That half the country would not just shrug at their violent death, but cheer it on. And they aren’t taking it well. I think quite a lot of liberals and lefties already believed MAGA hated them and wanted them dead, and have been correspondingly pessimistic about the future of democracy and of America. But I don’t believe the average MAGA supporter realised this. Now they are feeling the same way about the left that the left has been feeling about them. It’s a powder keg. ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2025, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/67 "2025-09-15T11:50:54Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Things will not be better _or_ worse due to his death. It is merely a convenient excuse to do what was already planned. I think “backlash” is a myth designed to keep the liberals at bay, a paying of the “danegeld”. I think that ignores human nature and basic cause and effect. Charlie Kirk’s death may just be a flash in the pan that will quickly disappear from the news cycle (I certainly hope so), but would you confidently say the same thing if over the next year we saw a dozen more prominent right wing figures gunned down? I think the risk of retaliatory violence against the left would go up in that scenario… and that would be a bad thing. Even if you don’t give a shit about Charlie Kirk, it makes sense to worry about vulnerable groups being targeted in retaliation. Thank God the shooter appears to be a white man and not a transgender immigrant. That makes it harder to scapegoat minorities. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2025, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/68 "2025-09-15T11:58:02Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > My son just started kindergarten, and let me tell you, things ain’t what they used to be. I picked him up early from school today. I had to show my ID to get in the first door, and I was ushered into the space between two sets of locked doors, and made to sit while someone else fetched my kid. At no point did I set foot in the front office. That’s normal. At my daughter’s school everyone who goes in has to sign in and out and wear ID, visitors must be accompanied at all times, and they don’t let anyone in unnecessarily. Children are only allowed to leave after school to an approved person, and when I pick up my daughter from after-school club, I ring a bell and then wait in the porch for her to be brought out. Even without easily available guns, someone who wants to commit violence can still do it. There are no active-shooter drills, though. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2025, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/69 "2025-09-15T17:14:36Z")
> [@Blalron](#): > > I think the risk of retaliatory violence against the left would go up in that scenario… and that would be a bad thing. More than it already has/is/will be? More than the right desires it to be? I highly doubt it. For the most part, it isn’t the left that riles up the shooters. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2025, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/70 "2025-09-15T17:22:53Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > That’s normal. At my daughter’s school everyone who goes in has to sign in and out and wear ID, visitors must be accompanied at all times, and they don’t let anyone in unnecessarily. And see, THAT’S the problem. Active shooters are almost never someone from the outside but rather someone with permission to be onsite. A student with a gun, a worker that was let go, a parent in a meeting with the principal. It is almost never someone off the street. And the fact that we don’t acknowledge that and dismiss the danger in the most likely suspects is what makes it worrisome. > [@DemonTree](#): > > There are no active-shooter drills, though. And so I weep. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2025, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/71 "2025-09-15T17:30:12Z")
I weep that there are active shooter drills. The needless anxiety it causes. Very few child gun deaths are in schools. Rationally have active shooter drills in the house. On the street. Schools are relatively already one of the safest places for kids. ---
**Author:** ![JoePockets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8dc957/32.png) [@JoePockets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoePockets)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2025, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/72 "2025-09-15T17:50:50Z")
I’m way more worried about school shootings than some smart mouth opportunist spewing his rich maga donors rhetoric for personal profit and gains! Also at a very young age words can be more painful & destruct full then sticks and stones! ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2025, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/73 "2025-09-15T18:17:44Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > > [@DemonTree](#): > > > > There are no active-shooter drills, though. > > And so I weep. Don’t worry @Saint_Cad, it’s because I live in the UK. Still, we recently had a young man attack a girls dance class with a knife, killing 3 young girls, and injuring another 8, and 2 adults. Banning guns helps, but it’s not a panacea. We still have the same people with the same motivations wanting to harm others. > [@DSeid](#): > > I weep that there are active shooter drills. The needless anxiety it causes. Very few child gun deaths are in schools. Rationally have active shooter drills in the house. On the street. Schools are relatively already one of the safest places for kids. America could stand to do more to address the routine violence that is concentrated in ‘bad neighbourhoods’. It’s not as dramatic and rarely makes the news, but it kills a lot more people, including children. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2025, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/74 "2025-09-15T18:22:40Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > I weep that there are active shooter drills. The needless anxiety it causes. The fact that decision makers agree with you is why people get slaughtered at work and school during an active shooter. I know someone who fought for active shooter training and was dismissed for the exact reason you gave. A couple of months later 5 people died as a result. True story. ---
**Author:** ![duality72](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duality72/32/3910_2.png) [@duality72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duality72)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2025, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/75 "2025-09-15T18:46:44Z")
You mean like decision makers that won’t implement stricter gun control? Gets people killed hundreds of times a year. True story. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2025, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/76 "2025-09-15T18:52:00Z")
> [@duality72](#): > > You mean like decision makers that won’t implement stricter gun control? Nope. Decision makers like principals and managers that refuse to train their students/employees what to do when someone is trying to gun them down because it may make them anxious. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2025, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/77 "2025-09-15T20:54:21Z")
I get the desire to knee jerk react. But despite your “true story” there is zero evidence that active shooter drills, “hardening schools”, or arming teachers, all actively being done across this country at great expense are at effective in any way. OTOH the harms they cause are very real. > **[The Impact of Active Shooter Drills in Schools](https://everytownresearch.org/report/the-impact-of-active-shooter-drills-in-schools/)** > > In their current state, active shooter drills threaten the wellbeing of entire school communities over prolonged periods of time. > Active shooter drills in schools are associated with increases in depression (39%), stress and anxiety (42%), and physiological health problems (23%) overall, including children from as young as five years old up to high schoolers, their parents, and teachers. Concerns over death increased by 22 percent, with words like blood, pain, clinics, and pills becoming a consistent feature of social media posts in school communities in the 90 days after a school drill. These findings unveil even more reason to pause before rushing toward active shooter drills as a potential solution to school violence, as evidence suggests that they are causing lasting emotional and physical harm to students, teachers, and the larger community. Kids are overwhelmingly currently safer from violence while in school than in their homes or pretty much anywhere else. True story. The vast majority of deaths from gun violence is elsewhere. Better enforcement of current regulations and better gun regulation would help. The big story tying the Kirk murder and school shootings to violence in our society overall matters and worries despite Kirk being a single life and school shootings being a very small number relative to gun related deaths over all. But they are to me me one connected story. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2025, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/78 "2025-09-15T21:04:49Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > I get the desire to knee jerk react. But despite your “true story” there is zero evidence that active shooter drills, No need for quotes. It is a true story but I am not at liberty to give out details that would identify the people involved. Second, there are drills that do not need to cause anxiety but could still help reinforce the flee, hide, fight response - which incidentally saved children’s lives at Sandy Hook rather than hiding in the classroom as a first resort. But sure, if you want, with no warning to the workers, to have masked men in camo with guns bust in yelling at the workers to get on the floor or they are going to fucking shoot them in the face then you are going to traumatize them. But that’s not because it is a drill; it is because it is a poorly thought out stupid-ass drill. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2025, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/79 "2025-09-15T21:47:20Z")
I think it’s a bit of a red herring lamenting the security around schools. I’ve lived in countries that were much safer than either the US or UK in terms of assaults in general, let alone attacks on schools. They didn’t have shooter drills but they did have strong security and surveillance at schools. It only takes one abduction for a society to decide that schools need to be a protected area. I can remember as a child things being different, and so and so friend of the family could just show up unannounced and say he was picking you up. But the problem is with us being ignorant of the risks then, rather than hysterical now. ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2025, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949/80 "2025-09-16T01:35:15Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I’ve lived in countries that were much safer than either the US or UK in terms of assaults in general, let alone attacks on schools Yeah, I live in South Africa. Domestic assault here is very high, and access to weapons (illegally) is easy - and yet there has never been a school shooting. Legal access is much, much harder. We can’t just walk into the equivalent of Walmart and pick up an AR15. I mean, we had an ad campaign a few years ago comparing the price of school text books to the price of a black market AK-47. Guess which was the cheapest? Our society is fucked up in so many ways, but we seem not to want to shoot school kids. Most murders here involve gang rivalry and/or legal or illegal alcohol distribution [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationally-speaking-is-the-murder-of-charlie-kirk-worth-worrying-over-more-than-the-murders-of-kids-in-schools/1022949.md?page=5)