Dear Mr. Kirk,
I am sorry that you are one of the many gun deaths in America this year. I am sorry you were one of the two who died in school shootings Wednesday. I mourn for your wife, and your daughter, and your son, and your unborn child and for you.
Your death this week was a great injustice in American society. An injustice much too common.
When I opened Instagram Wednesday I was met with the gruesome video of your death.
Beneath it was a quote from you at a Turning Point USA Faith event in Salt Lake City in 2023.
“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,” you said.
Some call your death karmic justice. I disagree. Regardless of what I or anyone else thinks of your opinions, you never deserved to be killed.
There was another school shooting in a high school near Denver Wednesday. Even for a high schooler like myself, school shootings have become banal, but when faced with your death on the screen, I was shocked. Because of you, I am reminded of the bloody reality we all have to face as Americans.
The three students in Denver never deserved to be shot, either. Unless we who still live and breathe in this country change something, your death is pointless. I cried today – for you, for your family, for the poor, for all the completely backward souls that decide to kill. I prayed for you and your family and for the students in Denver.
If Americans forget you, if we forget the shooting in Denver, if we forget the 47 school shootings in the US this year, we will be culpable for future lives lost to gun violence. We are shameful as a people. Condemning the violence is not enough. I am ashamed it took your death to remind me of that.
Gun violence is a festering wound on the face of Lady Liberty. I mourn all of those who have died in a shooting since Columbine and all of those who will die in the coming years. Mr. Kirk, your death was needless; gun violence is needless. As I mourn your death, I am angered by its futility.
I believe no good will come from this. I hope I am wrong.
This problem does have a solution, and that is changing. If we want to heal our wounds, we must change. Gun control laws are an effective conduit for this change.
According to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Gun Violence Solutions, “In general, the states with the highest gun death rates tend to be states … with weaker gun laws and higher levels of gun ownership.”
Laws can be changed, our Constitution can be amended, and lives can be saved. For your sake, Mr. Kirk, and for all those affected by gun violence, I can only hope that your death proves that a change must come.
Whether that actually happens is where my belief wavers.
I know our parties disagree on the Second Amendment, but the little hope I still hold for America comes from a sentiment of change, for the safety and the right to life, liberty, and happiness given to every American by the government, and if you believe in it, something greater.
