One of the arguments that is currently flying around the Internet is that it is in some way “ironic” or “instructive” that Charlie Kirk supported the Second Amendment but was killed by an assassin’s bullet. One quote, in particular, has proven too tempting for Kirk’s critics to ignore. Here’s the New York Times, citing that quote in a piece about the reaction online:
Other messages called attention to Mr. Kirk’s steadfast support for gun rights, including a resurfaced quote from a 2023 interview.
“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,” Mr. Kirk, 31, had said in that interview. Other quotes from Mr. Kirk’s social media feeds, suggesting that gun control was useless, were also reposted by online users.
Invariably, those “online users” have “reposted” that line because they think that Kirk’s death proves it wrong. But this is silly. In a free country such as the United States, there are all manner of items that people wish to keep lightly regulated that could, given some bad luck or the imposition of an evil act, become the immediate cause of their death. Among the things that I, for one, do not wish to see banned or more strictly superintended are cars, knives, alcohol, and swimming pools. Clearly, all of these things could kill me, and, unlike some other items that I don’t wish to see prohibited (junk food, for example), all of them could kill me through no fault of my own. Certainly, I hope that does not happen. But, if it does, it would not make much sense to point and laugh. My argument for those things remaining legal is not that I believe myself to be immune from their ill-effects, but that, on balance, I would rather have them around than not. To respond to this judgment by saying, “aha, and yet you ended up being killed by one of them!” is not to reject my premise; it is to ignore it.
Consider a more obviously virtuous example: The presumption of innocence in criminal trials. All told, this scheme probably makes it more difficult to lock up dangerous criminals than it would be if, instead, we presumed guilt. But I don’t care about that. In my view, the presumption of innocence is the prerequisite to a free and civilized society, and, as such, it ought not to be abridged in any circumstance. It is possible, yes, that I will end up being killed by a bad person whom the government was unable to convict — a person who, indirectly, my preferences had helped to free. Would that refute my case? Of course it wouldn’t. The suggestion is absurd.
Ultimately, what those who are posthumously criticizing Kirk mean is that, in their judgment, there is no plus-side to the private ownership of firearms, and that his calculation was therefore wrong. That’s fine. It’s not my view, but it’s a free country and others are entitled to disagree with me. What they are not entitled to do, however, is to project that disagreement onto others, or to assume that, because those others were the victims of the downsides, the upsides that they believed in have magically disappeared. Every day, we all take calculated risks based on our assessment of the best way to run our society. It does us a disservice as a self-governing people for those assessments to be ridiculed and dismissed when, as the result of some misdeed or some misfortune, we end up being made into an unwilling example of their wholly anticipated drawbacks.