Hoist by his own petard

 

The political activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot yesterday. To put that in perspective he was just one of approximately 130 people killed by firearms in the USA yesterday. And every day. Some 48,000 people every year. In addition about 75,000 people in the USA survive being shot. Every year.

No other civilised country in the world would accept this carnage with the same indifference as is seen in America. This shooting, which also occurred yesterday, has had far less publicity than Kirk. Shootings in Hungerford, and Dunblane in the UK, and in Port Arthur in Australia both resulted in public outcry and significant extra restrictions on gun ownership in countries with already strict regulation.

But Americans have a fierce attachment to the second amendment to the US constitution, the right to bear arms. Kirk himself was a strong proponent of gun ownership and is even quoted as having said "I think it's worth it. 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." Some, gun deaths? 48,000?

Invoking god in support of gun ownership is not the only example of Kirk’s faux Christianity. He once stated that said that he “wants to see Coca-Cola sponsored televised executions of Donald Trump’s political opponents if Trump returns to the White House. And, no, I'm not kidding.”

He was in addition a blatant  and shameless racist.

And a white Christian nationalist, a mysogynist, a homophobe and anti LGBGT activist.

And the true extent of his “christianity” is illustrated, again from his own mouth, in this quote, "I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage."

But, ironically, Kirk got what he wanted. He was killed, in full view of the world, one of those deaths that are, in his own words, justifiable to retain the second amendment. And if he did not approve of empathy, then he should not receive it.

To quote the bible, that he shamelessly and hypocritically claimed to follow;

"He that lives by the sword shall die by the sword" Mathew 26.52

"As ye sow, so shall ye reap." Galations 6.7-8