A Year After Charlie Kirk’s Killing, Political Violence Keeps Recurring

Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on September 10 at a Utah college campus by an assailant reportedly fixated on transgender ideology. In the months since, a string of separate incidents suggests the political violence that led to his death has not subsided.

A YouGov survey conducted September 10-12, in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, asked respondents whether violence to achieve political goals is ever justified. Twenty-five percent of those who identified as “very liberal” said yes, along with 17 percent of self-identified liberals. Among conservatives and very conservative respondents, that figure was 9 percent.

A separate snap poll taken the day after the killing asked whether it is acceptable to feel happy when a public figure one opposes dies. As The Hill reported, liberals were more likely to say it’s usually or always acceptable to feel that way — 16 percent overall, including 24 percent of “very liberal” respondents and 10 percent of those who identified as liberal but not very liberal.

A String of Incidents

Several weeks after Kirk’s death, a 41-year-old man was arrested on bomb charges after showing up to a Mass that Supreme Court justices traditionally attend at the start of the court’s term.

Around the same time, Virginia Democrats elected Jay Jones as attorney general, defeating incumbent Republican Jason Miyares by roughly 6 percentage points — despite revelations that Jones had fantasized about murdering a former Republican colleague, Todd Gilbert, and about Gilbert’s children dying in their mother’s arms.

A month later, four self-described leftist extremists were arrested on allegations they were planning a series of New Year’s Eve bombings and an ambush on ICE officers in Los Angeles.

This past April, President Donald Trump was the target of another attempt on his life. Cole Allen, a 31-year-old California resident, allegedly rushed past a Secret Service checkpoint armed with a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives, charging toward the ballroom at the Washington Hilton Hotel where Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and other Cabinet members were attending the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Allen was subdued by law enforcement.

In Ohio, Democrat Elliot Forhan ran for attorney general on a platform that included a promise to “legally” kill Trump if elected. Forhan lost in the May primary.

Taken together, these episodes — spanning Utah, Virginia, California and Ohio — paint a picture of political violence, or the open endorsement of it, that has persisted well beyond the shock of Kirk’s assassination.