“Bullets Are Replacing Ballots and Political Arguments Are Being Answered with Gunfire”

Political analyst and social commentator Tony Pentimalli shared the following earlier today on Facebook and BlueSky.

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Charlie Kirk and the Collapse
of Civic Life Into Bloodshed

By Tony Pentimalli
September 10, 2025
The temptation is immediate. News of Charlie Kirk’s death has already unleashed a wave of mockery. Social media is thick with grim satisfaction, pointing to the irony of a man who once declared that gun deaths were a necessary price for the Second Amendment now dying by the very weapon he defended. The instinct to laugh, to sneer, is almost irresistible. After years of Kirk ridiculing victims, dismissing survivors, and wrapping carnage in the language of liberty, some see this as the universe delivering justice.

That anger is real. It is the product of decades in which leaders like Kirk normalized mass shootings, waved away the bodies as collateral, and treated pleas for reform as weakness. To pretend otherwise would be dishonest. People are not wrong to feel the bitter symmetry.

But giving in to that impulse, letting ridicule be the final word, squanders a moment when something truer must be said. Because if we settle for mockery, we miss the far more terrifying truth: America has crossed another threshold, where bullets are replacing ballots and political arguments are being answered with gunfire. What happened in Utah is not justice. It is not irony come full circle. It is the collapse of civic life into bloodshed.

Kirk’s death does not sanctify him. His legacy is intact, and it is ugly. He built a movement to [extremize] students, to sow suspicion of science, democracy, and pluralism. He perfected the art of grievance politics, aligning himself with billionaires and demagogues while pretending to speak for the forgotten. His work left the country crueler, angrier, and more divided. Death does not absolve him of that. It does not make him a martyr. It simply leaves us with the damage he inflicted.

And yet the real irony is not that Kirk fell to the logic he embraced. The real irony is that America itself now seems to accept his prophecy: that gun deaths are indeed necessary, not for freedom, but for its undoing. The danger of this moment is not that Kirk got what he deserved. The danger is that we are beginning to accept a country where everyone eventually gets what no one deserves.

– Tony Pentimalli
via social media
September 10, 2025

Related Off-site Links:
Progressives – Who Reviled Charlie Kirk’s Politics – Repudiate His Murder – Brett Wilkins (Common Dreams, September 10, 2025).
Charlie Kirk Dies After Being Shot During Utah Event – David Doel (The Rational National, September 25, 2025).
Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA Founder, Tragically Killed at 31 in Utah Campus Shooting – Kit Cabello (Hard Lens Media, September 10, 2025).
Shock and Prayers After Conservative Activist Charlie Kirk Shot and Killed – John Grosso (National Catholic Reporter, September 10, 2025).
“This Is War”: Some Right-Wing Figures Call for Retribution Following Kirk Killing – Anna Merlan, Julianne McShane and Kiera Butler (Mother Jones, September 10, 2025).
Charlie Kirk and the Value of Empathy – John Pavlovitz (The Beautiful Mess, September 10, 2025).

UPDATES: Charlie Kirk’s Toxic Legacy of Hatred and Division – Christopher D. Cook (Common Dreams, September 11, 2025).
“Moment of Great Peril”: Jeff Sharlet on Killing of Charlie Kirk and Rising Political Violence in U.S. – Democracy Now! (September 11, 2025).
Thoughts On The Assassination Of Charlie Kirk – Caitlin Johnstone (Caitlin’s Newsletter, September 11, 2025).
Charlie Kirk Killed . . . But There’s More – Sabrina Salvati (Sabby Sabs, September 11, 2025).
MSNBC Analyst Fired for Kirk Comments; Jesse Watters: “Avenge Charlie’s Death” – Rising (September 11, 2025).
Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Looked a Lot Like a Professional Hit – Revolutionary Change (September 11, 2025).
Charlie Kirk’s Murder Is a Tragedy and a Disaster – Ben Burgis and Meagan Day (Jacobin, September 11, 2025).
Charlie Kirk’s Assassination: A Dark, Cold Winter Is Coming – Owen Jones (Battlelines, September 11, 2025).
What Corporate Media Won’t Say About Charlie Kirk Assassination – Jordan Chariton (Status Coup News, September 11, 2025).
On Charlie Kirk, Public Grieving, and Violence – Emily Gittings (Common Dreams, September 12, 2025).
Mehdi Hasan: Trump Is Weaponizing the Murder of Charlie Kirk to Go After the Left – Democracy Now! (September 12, 2025).
FBI Names 22-Year-Old Tyler Robinson as Charlie Kirk Murder Suspect – Brad Reed (Common Dreams, September 12, 2025).


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Robert Reich: Quote of the Day – July 14, 2024
• Naming the Pattern and the Source