My favorite poem, my -- my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:
"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country ...
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past -- and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of [people] in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.
And let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.
Bobby Kennedy, 1968
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
So perhaps a better excerpt in light of recent events would be
>> And another reason that I'm happy to live in [the second half of the 20th century] is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.
It’s awful that anyone dies.
Let’s not escalate this on either side. We don’t need another Hitler, and we don’t need a French Revolution either. We just need people that stop trying to outdo each other.
It's easy to get sucked into a learned helplessness doing this, though. We know exactly why it happens - Charlie Kirk explained it himself:
"You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death. That is nonsense, [...] But I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth 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. That is a prudent deal. It is rational."
When people push for firearms control in America, this is the polemic they argue along. You can say they're justified or completely bonkers, but denying that these scenarios exist is the blueprint for erasing causality.
Charlie Kirk's assassin is still at-large and fired from a standoff distance, with a conventional long-barrel firearm.
Make of that what you will.
You said it yourself that the shooter is still at large... despite the involvement of the FBI and other agencies.
Is there something I'm missing here?
> despite the involvement of the FBI and other agencies.
Many such cases. We're still looking for D. B. Cooper, aren't we? Did the FBI ever dig up Hoffa's body? The feds are hardly a panacea with these things.
And you need more context and the training required to take such a shot and then evade the local cops and FBI, with a solid escape plan from a fuckton of witnesses and so forth. And I did not mention that most people would probably panic and mess up, let alone take the shot and escape. It is much more complex than that. When you look at the pattern fit, it no longer looks like a spur-of-the-moment act by a "typical gun owner".
They gave us some 22 years old kid as the person who pulled this whole operation, allegedly, and acted alone. Even if someone had been shooting since childhood, the rooftop selection, escape route, and casing inscriptions suggest deliberate operational planning and situational awareness, not just trigger skill. Shooting skill alone doesn't cover the logistics and environmental awareness. Plus a 22-year-old who "trained since childhood" might have technical skill, but most young adults still lack the composure and foresight to execute a high-stakes assassination with minimal mistakes, especially under the psychological pressure of killing a person in a public setting.
FWIW, some cases remain unsolved for decades because of scarce evidence, degraded scenes, or lack of witnesses, which does not come into play here at all. Modern investigations, by contrast, often benefit from immediate CCTV, cell-data, social media, and so forth.
...thus I remain skeptical.
> but most young adults still lack the composure and foresight to execute a high-stakes assassination with minimal mistakes
This is conjecture, unless you can back it up with a source. The history books are filled with 22-year-old kids shooting politicians and getting away with it, famously the Red Guard uninstalled an entire government with this strategy. With a bunch of riled-up students.
I spent a lot of time at the range when I was a kid - hitting a 200yd shot from an elevated platform is not difficult with a M1903. A modern 63mm loading can easily push 3,000fps in a long-barrel rifle and if you reloaded the cartridge for a single-use assassination, I see no reason you couldn't push 5,000fps if the barrel doesn't explode from overpressure. With those kinds of ballistics its not a very tough shot unless you're shooting into a hurricane. All you need then is a hunting scope, and that can be bought for $170 in cash at Cabelas.
> Modern investigations, by contrast, often benefit from immediate CCTV, cell-data, social media, and so forth.
This I absolutely agree with. It sounds like the only reason they found him is because his friend turned in his Discord DMs, he might still be on the loose if not for the digital breadcrumb trail he left behind.
Bit of a harrowing precedent for online privacy, but I presume that will fall on deaf ears.