On Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025, at Utah Valley University, during a Turning Point USA event titled The American Comeback Tour, 31-year-old conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was fatally shot. Graphic video footage shows he was shot in the neck by a single shot fired. Officials say the snipper was on a rooftop approximately 200 yards away, from where Kirk sat.
Kirk was best known as the co-founder of Turning Point USA, a non-profit that seeks to spread conservative ideas to students on US college campuses. He was also popular on various social media platforms such as TikTok and X, where he has accumulated over 12 million followers across the platforms.
At 1:00 p.m., during 6th period, just 30 minutes after the incident, conversations about Kirk had already exploded at AHS. The last three classes of the school day revolved around a single topic: the video footage. Some mentioned that they had seen multiple videos of the incident from various angles, while others made jokes and laughed. One student even admitted, “I want to see the closest version so bad.”
The way the footage was spread, and the tone in which the students were talking, shows how deeply desensitized to violence society has become. We have grown comfortable in consuming violence through media that our first instinct is not shock, sadness, or empathy, but extreme curiosity and enthusiasm.
Just an hour after the incident, graphic clips of Kirk’s death were being shared across all platforms, even news sources, many of which have since been taken down. These different perspectives and camera angles made the shooting feel less like a tragedy and more like a sporting event replay.
It is no surprise that people yearn to see the footage; desensitization is deeply rooted within us as a society, but this does not excuse those reactions. Psychologists note that repeated exposure to violent imagery, on social media, TV, and in video games, can make people numb to real suffering. That loss of sensitivity is exactly what we saw in the reactions to Kirk’s death.
Not only can this desensitization lead to less sensitivity to the pain and suffering of others, but research shows that exposure to violence can lead to lower emotional responses to real-life violence, less empathy, more aggression, and a greater acceptance of using violence to solve real-life problems.
Regardless of who he was, what his opinions were, this is a tragedy involving a real human. Charlie Kirk was not just a controversial commentator; he was a son, a husband, and a father. He has family, friends, and people who care for him.. To obsess over this footage is to treat real harm as fictional drama.
Moments like this should make us pause. If our instinct is to search the internet for the closest version of someone’s death, then we have lost our empathy. We have lost our humanity. We have lost our semblance of a rational society.
How are you any different than the killer if you’re sharing and rewatching Kirk’s death? Violence should not be something we cheer for or something we consume like entertainment. It should remind us to respect each other. It should remind us how delicate life is. It should remind us that everyone has value.
