Gun Violence Isn’t Just Political, It’s Civil

On the evening of July 4, 2011, while dancing with her friends during a 4th of July celebration in an Independence, MO parking lot, eleven-year-old Blair Shanahan was struck in the neck by a stray bullet from a .900mm glock shot in celebratory gunfire.

Blair died at 9 a.m. the following day, July 5, 2011.

I had only met my older second-cousin, Blair, a handful of times. I had just turned five, and Blair was eleven. At my age, I found every older girl to be incredibly cool. I would have liked to show her my dolls and drawings. I was hoping she would get to babysit me soon. 

Like Blair, Charlie Kirk, a far-right American political activist and co-founder of conservative organization Turning Point USA, was killed from a gunshot wound to his neck — fired during an event at Utah Valley University Sept. 10. 

Kirk’s graphic death was recorded from multiple angles, clipped and posted online millions of times immediately after it occured. He was shot and killed in front of students attending his event, faculty working the event and his family — who were there to watch him. 

These stories of violent gun deaths are not uncommon. Nearly every American I know, knows someone who has died due to gun violence. Their loved one had triumphs, accolades, low moments, emotional variety and the same dull, monotonous daily tasks we all suffer through. 

Until they didn’t. 

I didn’t understand why I couldn’t see Blair and show her my dolls and drawings. Baby pink ribbons of waxy plastic were tied around trees across my hometown to honor her memory. I felt jealous because she had picked a fabulous color of pink — wherever she was where she could pick colors of plastic ribbon, but couldn’t babysit me. I was so young, I didn’t understand Blair had died.

Blair, like any other victim, woke up, maybe looked in the mirror and made faces while she brushed her teeth. Maybe she danced to music or made breakfast with her family. 

And then, like any other victim of gun violence, was gone before there was time to do it again. 

Kirk also brushed his teeth the morning before he died. Kirk was human, but he was also a public figure who amassed a massive following on bigoted, racist and violent views.

In his life as a right-wing political activist, Kirk advocated for indiscriminate gun ownership in the United States — even assault rifles such as the AK-47. Kirk amplified a number of deeply racist, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic and derogatory ideologies which gave him a predominantly extremist alt-right audience.

Kirk died of a societal symptom of exactly what he was defending: every American has the right to own any style of firearm for any purpose without a background check, secondary process or any other form of testing prior to ownership. 

This is saddening, not because the political figure Charlie Kirk has died, but because Kirk was a father, a husband, a son, a coworker and a loved one. He, like us all, had human dignity that wasn’t any less valid because he was a political figure.

Yet, Kirk advocated for human dignity to be stripped from many Americans through legislative action. Which is why when he died, many online began to celebrate his death — or rather what feels like a type of socio-political safety in a culturally tumultuous time. 

“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. That is a prudent deal. It is rational,” Kirk stated in 2023 during a Turning Point USA Faith event.

To some, I can imagine this feels like a change has occurred in the political sphere after Kirk’s death. Perhaps now that Kirk, an activist for far-right political action, is gone, there will be some sort of security in legislative and communal safety. 

But there isn’t. Kirk’s death, like all other deaths due to gun violence, is a result of nearly thirty years of vehement and nearly unmoving political discourse regarding the Second Amendment. 

As an American student born after Columbine who has lived my academic life in-between active shooter drills and crime reports — this violence is not an uncommon experience. 

One of my closest friends I’ve met at Loyola was in her school during a Denver school shooting in 2023. My grandfather was told over the phone in 1997 that his brother had been killed by a shotgun wound. A restaurant owner in my high school neighborhood was killed attempting to stop a car-jacking in 2024. 

Contrary to Kirk’s previous statement, there is no way to justify any of their deaths.

During my study abroad program over the summer, I was in a pub, watching a Tuesday night free-for-all karaoke session. There were a few Americans in the pub besides myself and some friends, but we were no more disruptive than the rest of the rowdy pub-goers. We figured we were accepted into the crowd — at least for the night. 

Then a group of unmistakably British, university-age people came up to the stage.

“To all the Americans in here — this is for you,” I remembered one of the karaoke singers saying into the mic.

The first few bars to “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People, a song about gun violence, began to play. 

The blood drew up to my face in shame and embarrassment for being from such a nation whose government could allow — or at worst, encourage — the death of its own people. 

To be from a nation whose systematic negligence cost my family’s, friends’ and community members’ lives stirred a deep sense of shame, sadness and alienation in me. 

But I was also furious. I was angered at the mindless disrespect for all of our loved ones and fellow Americans who had died violently due to either an individual’s, an enforcement’s or a nation’s negligence.  

But though distasteful, it made me remember the reason why someone from a different nation, who likely has never been personally affected by gun violence, would make such a joke. And why it would be so rattling. 

This random drunken British man likely never had to understand the real communal pain caused by gun violence. Just as knife violence and explosive attacks are tangible threats within the UK, but seem absurd to any American — gun violence may seem ridiculously extreme to them.

They are mostly protected from the pain and because of that, they may sing “Pumped Up Kicks” to a girl who perhaps has been in a school shooting, a son who lost his father to gang violence or a child who could not understand why her cousin could no longer babysit her. 

The death of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University is the same as the deaths of students and faculty at Columbine High School in 1999, the student anti-war demonstrators at Kent State University in 1970, the civil rights leaders such as Fred Hampton and Mark Clark of the Black Panther Party in 1969  and the civilian Sonya Massey who was indiscriminately shot in her Springfield, Ill. home by police officers in 2024. 

Civilian deaths due to gun violence have nowhere near the same visibility, call to action or communal impact that political gun violence deaths have. Yet, now that political violence is rapidly increasing in the United States, the reach of these stories draws attention to the issue of gun violence. 

But gun violence is enacted on every American because every American is affected. As long as gun laws are unregulated, every single American has a target on their head.