This afternoon brought the horrific news that Turning Point USA founder and president Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University in Orem.

Kirk was doing what he loved and did best: Sharing conservative ideas with college students at an event that he called “Prove Me Wrong.” Kirk regularly welcomed one student after another to step up, ask him anything about any subject, and debate him openly. And may the best man, woman, or Charlie Kirk win.

The well-spoken and intrepid Kirk won most of those showdowns, maybe all of them. But he was not a ball-spiker. He politely urged his supporters and detractors alike to learn more, think harder, and keep talking.

For this, most likely, he took a single bullet in the neck, which soon ended his life. At the unthinkable age of 31, Kirk’s voice was silenced. His wife, Erika, is widowed. His two young children are now fatherless. At this writing, his murderer is at large.

The fact that one rifle round snuffed Kirk out from some 200 yards raises the question of whether a crazed madman erased him or if the culprit was a trained professional. The days ahead might make this clear.

I did not know Charlie Kirk well. However, I met him at an April 2018 event in Naples, Florida. FreedomWorks, a now-shuttered conservative group, organized the gathering. Kirk was affable, quick-witted, and big. I remember him as a much, much taller man than I imagined. We shook hands, spoke briefly, and exchanged pleasantries as he gazed upon me from a commanding height.

I subsequently grew to admire Kirk for building Turning Point USA into a powerful force on some 3,000 high school and college campuses. TPUSA educates young people on the conservative principles of individual liberty, personal responsibility, limited government, free markets, and peace through strength. Kirk and TPUSA’s efforts to open these minds inspired these young Americans to go to the polls and support candidates who promised to turn these beliefs into public policy.

The discussion over this barbarism already has devolved into the “both sides do it” garbage.

Where are the conservatives who prevent liberals from speaking on college campuses?

Where are the free-marketeers who incinerate police stations, torch Tesla dealerships, shatter windows at government buildings, and attempt to turn courthouses into cinders?

Where are the Right-wingers who yank statues from pedestals?

Where are the MAGA activists who shoot CEOs in their back?

Where are the parents’ rights activists who have lifted a cuticle against the notorious teachers’ unions?

Yes, a relatively small handful of zealots got out of control on January 6, 2021. Those few who shattered windows and kicked down doors at the U.S. Capitol deserve serious punishment.

However, most of those who got into trouble merely wandered into the Capitol, mistakenly assuming that an open house was underway. The fact that Capitol Police officers waved scores of visitors inside led many to misunderstand that it was OK to enter the premises.

While the American Right is not precisely a convent full of virgins in this regard, it is beyond obvious that those with their knickers down are overwhelmingly on the American Left. The “Trump = Hitler” rhetoric, doxxing of ICE agents, blazing Waymos, ​the Glock-wielding thug on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s lawn, and the Bernie Sanders acolyte who shot up a GOP baseball practice (nearly killing Congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana) all came from the Left, not the Right.

So, enough with the “both sides” ​B.S.

“I want to be very clear that this is a political assassination,” Governor Spencer Cox (R-Utah) told journalists at 4:30 p.m. local time today.

Let’s hope that law-enforcement officials find the domestic terrorist who killed Kirk — and soon. Assuming this happens, the gunman should focus on Cox’s words: “I want to remind people that we still have the death penalty here in Utah.”

​The Beehive State’s capital-punishment​ methods include the firing squad. Executing Charlie Kirk’s murderer at the end of a rifle would be a fitting coda to this afternoon’s ​bloodcurdling atrocity.

Rest in peace, Charlie Kirk.

​Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.

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