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>>david9+(OP)
Looking at recent events through a historical lens: the 1960s saw the assassinations of MLK, RFK, JFK, and Malcolm X during a wave of progressive change. Today’s assassination attempts and targeted violence seem to follow a similar pattern during periods of significant social and political shifts.

As RFK said after MLK’s death, we must choose between “violence and non-violence, between lawlessness and love.” His call for unity and rejecting hatred feels as urgent now as it was then.

Violence is never the answer. But understanding these tragic patterns might help us navigate our current moment with hopefully more empathy.

>>tmsh+s41
This is dangerous false equivalency. Charlie Kirk was not advocating for the rights of the downtrodden. He was a right wing provocateur, and he’s on the record saying that “some gun deaths are ok” in service of the 2nd amendment, and in making light of the nearly deadly political attack on the Pelosi family.

Political violence, especially deadly violence is not ok. But comparing Charlie Kirk to MLK is also not ok.

>>pm90+Q51
Right it’s more that it’s odd that there’s all these assassinations of conservatives (UnitedHealthCare etc). And previously there were many assassinations of progressives. I think it’s just the leaders in a dominant part of a force in society become casualties. Loss of life is always tragic even if we disagree with everything they stand for. But anyway the historical part (if that is what is happening - hard to tease out if there’s just more gun violence in general) helps me make sense of it. The dominant wave has breaks or we see them more somehow.

>>tmsh+t81
It's not like the assassinations of progressives ever stopped - the Hoffmans were killed literally a few months ago. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_le...