Charlie Kirk is dead. Americans must face why.
His murder was not random, not confusing, not detached from the battles he fought so fiercely in life. It was the direct consequence of his bold refusal to bend before one of the most aggressive and destabilizing ideologies of our time: transgender radicalism.
For years, Kirk warned about the dangers of this movement. Not just its cultural consequences, but the deeper crisis of mental illness and violence it has unleashed across the nation. In the end, his voice was silenced by precisely the pestilence he spent his career opposing.
The facts are painfully clear. On Sept. 13, 2025, police captured Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old suspect in Kirk’s murder, after a tense 33-hour manhunt that spanned cities and involved local law enforcement working with the FBI. Robinson had been living in a shared apartment in Saint George, Utah, with roommates, including Lance Twiggs, a young man “transitioning” from male to female.
The shooting itself occurred two days earlier, during Kirk’s “American Comeback” speaking tour at Utah Valley University in Orem, south of Provo. Kirk was engaging with students on subjects including gun violence and transgender issues when he was struck in the neck by a sniper’s bullet. Moments before, a student had asked him about the number of transgender mass shooters over the past decade.
The irony was crushing: a man known for exposing the dangers of transgender activism was gunned down in the very event he addressed the link between that ideology and violence.
Investigators quickly pieced together Robinson’s motive. Utah Governor Spencer Cox noted that Robinson, though raised in a conservative family, had veered leftward politically, lashing out at Kirk during a family dinner shortly before the event. Robinson’s romantic partner, Twiggs, fully cooperated with investigators and had no prior knowledge of the attack.
Yet text messages revealed the killer’s thinking in stark terms. Hours after the shooting, Robinson confessed to Twiggs, saying he had “had enough of [Kirk’s] hatred” and left a note reading, “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I’m going to take it.”
Court documents confirmed Robinson planned the assassination for more than a week, selecting Kirk specifically for his political views and executing the plan from a rooftop sniper position with a bolt-action rifle. Robinson’s DNA was found on the trigger. His own mother said that he had become increasingly supportive of gay and transgender rights and singled out Kirk for criticism in family discussions.
Twiggs, Robinson’s partner, has a troubled past marked by substance abuse, estrangement from family, and a failed pursuit of professional gaming. Forensic evidence confirmed a romantic relationship between the two. Witnesses even observed the pair holding hands and kissing in the days before the murder.
Prosecutors have stated plainly that Robinson’s motive stemmed from outrage at Kirk’s criticism of transgender ideology, with the question on transgender mass shooters serving as the immediate trigger. This, therefore, was not merely a personal dispute. It was the collision of a national crisis with one of its loudest critics.
That crisis is impossible to ignore. UCLA’s Williams Institute discovered that 42 percent of transgender adults in America have attempted suicide, while 28 percent drink dangerously and 31 percent suffer debilitating drug usage. Over half of transgender adultsb— 56 percent — have engaged in non-suicidal self-injury at some point in their lives. Nearly half, 44 percent, reported experiencing suicidal thoughts in the recent past, with 7 percent having made a suicide attempt. 21 percent reported recent self-injury.
Furthermore, 82 percent of transgender adults have sought formal mental health services, a striking contrast to just 47 percent of “cisgender” adults. Roughly one in four transgender individuals turned to nontraditional sources of help such as religious leaders or alternative medicine, a higher share than the 20 percent of non-transgender adults who did the same.
Within the transgender community, “nonbinary” have people faced particularly severe struggles. They were four times more likely than transgender “women” to engage in hazardous drinking. Compared to transgender “men,” “nonbinary” individuals were four times more likely to report problematic drug use, three times more likely to suffer serious psychological distress, six times more likely to have recently contemplated suicide, and four times more likely to have engaged in non-suicidal self-injury at some point in their lives.
A 2022 study examined medical and pharmacy records from the U.S. Military Health System between 2009 and 2018. The researchers measured discontinuation of “gender-affirming hormone therapy,” defined as the absence of prescriptions for more than 90 consecutive days after starting treatment. The results showed a 4-year discontinuation rate of 30 percent overall: 31 percent among “transfeminine” patients and 29 percent among “transmasculine” patients.
Kirk knew these statistics are catastrophic signals of an ideology that forces vulnerable people deeper into despair. He spoke out against policies that pushed children toward irreversible surgeries without addressing their underlying trauma. He understood that when schools and activist groups normalize gender confusion, they are not saving lives. They are feeding a mental health catastrophe.
Needless to say, this feeding frenzy is fueled by leftism.
Recent Center for Strategic and International Studies data shows left-wing terrorist attacks in the U.S. are rising, continuing a trend that accelerated after 2016. From 2016 to 2024, leftist incidents averaged four per year, up from just over one annually in the prior decade. 2025 is on track to be the most violent year in more than 30 years, with five events recorded by July 4. These have included a March plot to assassinate House Speaker Mike Johnson and an arson attack on the New Mexico GOP headquarters.
A YouGov poll, conducted after Kirk’s assassination, found 18% of liberals viewed political violence as sometimes justified, compared to 7% of conservatives and 6% of moderates. It also showed 25% of liberals found it acceptable to feel happy about an opponent’s death, versus 12% of conservatives.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk is the most chilling proof yet that transgender ideology, and its attendant leftism, have metastasized into thirst for bloodshed. He devoted much of his career to challenging the lies of transgender zealotry. He called out the cultural elites who rebrand mental illness as “identity,” vilifying any dissent as hate.
For this, he was labeled dangerous. For this, he was mocked and harassed. And ultimately, for this, he was targeted by a radical whose worldview was shaped by the very ideology Kirk fought to discredit.
The tragedy is profound. But to leave it there would be to dishonor Kirk’s legacy. His death must become a wake-up call for America. Transgender ideology is not simply a private matter of identity. It is a movement that has already warped public health, disrupted education, redefined law, and, as this murder shows, emboldened violence.
Kirk’s life was cut short because he refused to compromise with lies. His courage demands that others carry on the fight he began, not with bitterness but with conviction. The menace of transgender ideology cannot be wished away. It must be named, challenged, and defeated—for the sake of truth, for the sake of justice, and for the sake of America not going the way of self-destruction.
Charlie Kirk knew the stakes. Now the rest of America must know them too.
Dr. Joseph Ford Cotto hosts and produces News Sight, speaking the data-driven truth about economic and political issues that impact you. During the 2024 presidential election, he created the Five-Point Forecast, which correctly predicted Trump's national victory and the outcome in all swing states. The author of numerous nonfiction books, Cotto holds a doctorate in business administration and is a Lean Six Sigma Certified Black Belt. During 2014, HLM King Kigeli V of Rwanda bestowed a hereditary knighthood upon him. It was followed by a barony the next year.