Charlie Kirk should still be alive.

Kirk’s children should not have to grow up in a world where a video exists of their dad dying violently and bloodily. Even if they never watch it, others have. Others will.

Kirk’s parents should not have to grieve their son in a world where such a violent video exists. His wife should not have to mourn her husband in a world where such a violent video exists.

Such a violent video shouldn’t exist. Because such a violent act shouldn’t have happened. Shouldn’t ever happen. Shouldn’t keep happening.

But we know it will.

We know this is a country awash in guns. We know this is a country awash in gun deaths. We know this is a country filled with children who’ve lost parents, parents who’ve lost children, teachers who’ve lost students, students who’ve lost teachers, communities who’ve lost leaders, friends who’ve lost soulmates, families who’ve lost their sense of safety and wholeness and hope — all to guns.

Kirk’s death is unique in that it captured attention around the globe and inspired public mourning, public discourse and public discord.

But his cause of death is all too common. His shooting, which happened at Utah Valley University, wasn’t even the only shooting at a school that day. Earlier that same day, a 16-year-old student fired about 20 rounds inside Colorado’s Evergreen High School. When authorities approached him outside the school, he used his gun to shoot and kill himself.

Two weeks earlier, two children were killed and at least 18 more people were injured when a shooter fired through the windows of Annunciation Church in Minneapolis. They were gathered for Mass to celebrate their first week of school.

Harper Moyski was 10 years old the day she died. Fletcher Merkel, the other child killed in church that day, was 8.

“She just packed so much joy and imagination into her short 10 years,” Harper’s mom, Jackie Flavin, said at a memorial service the following weekend. “Thank God. Thank God she made it all count."

What are we doing?

In 2023, the most recent year in which data is available, 46,728 people in the U.S. died from gun-related injuries, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There have been more than 300 mass shootings in the U.S. so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Our gun homicide rate is 26 times higher than that of other high-income nations, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.

Gun violence has been the leading cause of death among American children and teenagers since 2020.

I have typed these sentences dozens upon dozens of times over the years. I double-check the statistics. I update the numbers. I see if gun violence has been downgraded from the leading cause of death for America’s kids to a leading cause of death for America’s kids. As if that would make it better.

I am a broken record on the topic of guns. We can, and should, look at motives and mental health and security breakdowns and safety protocols when a shooting — any shooting — shakes a nation, shakes a neighborhood, shakes a family.

But we also have to look at guns.

Because it’s obscene that a nation this resource-rich, this powerful, this educated, this innovative sacrifices thousands upon thousand of its citizens at the altar of gun violence each year.

It’s obscene that Harper Moyski had to pack all her joy and imagination into 10 years.

It’s obscene that Charlie Kirk’s children no longer have a father.

It’s obscene that Americans are shot at schools and churches and synagogues and mosques and car repair shops and grocery stores and concerts and night clubs and Super Bowl parades and July 4 parades and military bases and funeral homes. It’s obscene that I could keep going.

It’s obscene that grieving widows and shattered parents and mourning siblings and shell-shocked children have to keep sharing photos and stories of their dead loved ones as an offering and a warning and a clarion call for change — in front of Congress, in news stories, on Facebook, in mailings, during press conferences, to anyone who will watch, to anyone who will listen.

It’s obscene that we don’t have leaders on both sides of the aisle demanding change — after anyone’s shooting death, no matter how many people know their name. It’s a policy choice to let Americans live — and die — like this.

And it doesn’t have to be this way.

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