What Charlie Kirk ACTUALLY said

Charlie's real statement on the Second Amendment and Bearing Arms

I am not in the business of doing apologetics for anyone or anything except truth, and Christ and His Church. This piece is not a fan-driven piece of Charlie Kirk apologetics, it is the vocal stance of someone who is sick of lies, effeminate and empathetic mischaracterization, and spineless manipulation of facts to serve progressivist idealogies. These are the words of one who is standing firmly, boldly, and loudly proclaiming the objective truth. I may not have been the biggest follower of his work, but Charlie Kirk’s mission and work were excellent. And his impact and memory deserve at the very least the truth from us.

The Real Context of Charlie Kirk’s Words on the Second Amendment

Charlie Kirk’s assassination has triggered a wave of misrepresentations about what he actually believed. Among the loudest distortions is the charge that Kirk somehow “justified” mass shootings, or “wanted” the massacre of children in schools, or minimized the horror of gun deaths in America. I was at a memorial service for him and protesters showed up with signs that essentially posited that Charlie supported the killing of children because they were an acceptable cost. That repulsive accusation collapses immediately when one looks at his actual words. But as is increasingly the case in our age of sound bites and social-media outrage, context is ignored in favor of emotive outbursts and toxic empathy.

At an April 5, 2023, TPUSA Faith event at Awaken Church in Salt Lake City, Kirk spelled out, with clarity, the foundational purpose of the Second Amendment. He said:

“The Second Amendment is not even about personal defense. That is important. The Second Amendment is there, God forbid, so that you can defend yourself against a tyrannical government. And if that talk scares you — ‘wow, that’s radical, Charlie, I don’t know about that’ — well then, you have not really read any of the literature of our Founding Fathers. Number two, you’ve not read any 20th-century history. You’re just living in Narnia.”

There is nothing remotely radical in this claim. It is standard American political philosophy rooted in the Declaration of Independence, where the Founders explicitly affirmed that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” To Kirk’s point, one need only skim 20th-century history to see how unarmed populations fared under tyranny: Stalin’s gulags, Hitler’s camps, Mao’s purges, Pol Pot’s killing fields, and the historical list continues...

Kirk then went further, stating the part that sent journalists into paroxysms of moral panic:

“Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty. Driving comes with a price. 50,000 people die on the road every year. That’s a price… So we need to be very clear that you’re not going to get gun deaths to zero. It will not happen… 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. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”

Was Kirk celebrating gun deaths? Of course not. He was describing reality with more honesty than most politicians are willing to muster. The utopian fantasy of erasing all gun deaths is no different from the fantasy of erasing all car accidents by banning cars. Liberty always has a cost, and the only way to reduce that cost is through the cultivation of virtue and the protection of the innocent, not through sweeping bans that empower criminals and weaken the law-abiding.

Gun Control’s Myth of Safety

Gun-control advocates love to gesture toward “successful” models of confiscation or restriction, but their cherry-picked data rarely survives scrutiny. The hard reality is this: strict gun laws consistently fail in large nations with porous borders, deep criminal networks, and multiple states or provinces.

Malaysia, my country of origin, is a textbook case. The country has some of the most draconian gun laws on the planet. It is virtually impossible to legally get a gun as a civillian in the country. Yet Malaysia records roughly 350 gun deaths a year—comparable, when proportioned to population, to America’s intentional gun violence (excluding suicides). For perspective: during my college years, my close friend’s father was gunned down at a business dinner in Kuala Lumpur. In a nation where private firearm ownership is virtually impossible, criminals still had access to guns. Why? Because criminals, by definition, do not obey laws.

Brazil, Mexico, El Salvador, the Philippines, India, Honduras, every single one of these nations enforce gun restrictions far harsher than the United States. Yet they vastly outpace America in per-capita gun violence. These nations demonstrate what happens when governments disarm the innocent while leaving criminal cartels and gangs untouched: the law-abiding become targets.

Australia is the favorite counterexample. After the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, the government instituted a mandatory gun buyback. Advocates boast that mass shootings plummeted. What they deliberately don’t mention is that black-market gun trades in Australia skyrocketed, violent home invasions increased, big city crime spiked, and law-abiding citizens lost the means to defend themselves. The other reality is that Australia is an island with tight border control. Replicating that model in a continental nation with 330 million people, fifty states, and thousands of miles of land borders is not only absurd, it is nothing short of fantasy because it simply cannot be done! Calling for open borders and heavy gun control means calling for open season on American peace and tranquility. Pick your poison, progressivists.

The only “success stories” of gun control occur in isolated island nations (Singapore being a prime example) where government surveillance is absolute, chewing gum is illegal, liberty is sharply curtailed, and citizens live under the watchful eye of a paternalistic state. If your model requires authoritarian micromanagement, then your model is incompatible with liberty and a virtuous society.

Misplaced Outrage and Selective Grief

Every life is precious, every death a tragedy. Kirk did not say otherwise. But the conversation collapses when outrage is weaponized as a substitute for thought, the perspective of which every gun control advocate espouses. If the metric is “death prevention at all costs,” then let’s be consistent. Roughly 46,000 to 50,000 Americans die in car accidents every year. Literally hundreds of thousands die annually from medical mistakes, a number so staggering that it eclipses all gun deaths combined. Yet no one proposes banning cars or outlawing doctors. Why? Because people recognize the social good of driving and medical practice, despite their risks. Kirk’s point was simple: the Second Amendment should be viewed through the same moral lens. Why? Because, as a social compact, it is owed at least equal assessment in consistent analysis.

The moral calculus is not between utopia and carnage, unless you’re a Marxist. The moral calculus is between liberty with risk and tyranny with “safety.” Those who deny this either have not read history, or worse, prefer the paternalistic hand of government over the dignity of self-governance.

The Only Real Solution: Virtue and Defense

Kirk was clear-eyed about the only realistic remedies to violence:

“You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It’s drivel… You could significantly reduce them through having more fathers in the home, by having more armed guards in front of schools.”

This is not “radicalism.” It is common sense rooted in natural law and affirmed by Catholic moral theology. The Catechism teaches that “legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others” (CCC 2265). The Church recognizes pacifism as a personal choice but has never taught it as the sole binding doctrine of the Christian. Proportionate force in the defense of innocent life is a moral good, and is just, and necessary; and is sound biblical and natural law truth.

Kirk’s practical observation was equally clear: armed guards work. Airports, banks, sporting events, even gun shows—all are secure because they are protected by men with firearms. Yet our schools, filled with the most vulnerable among us, are deliberately left defenseless. In a culture obsessed with DEI hires, “safe spaces,” beaureaucratic bloat, red tape navigators, and symbolic gestures, the ridiculous refusal to invest in trustworthy armed protection for children is not compassion. It is tantamount to social negligence.

Liberty’s Price

In the end, Kirk was not excusing violence. He never did. He was pointing to the sobering reality that liberty has a cost. His critics prefer to plug their ears, clutch their outrage, and demand a utopia that has never existed and never will. Gun control does not work in large free nations and anyone who has picked up a history book will see this. Criminals will always find weapons. Disarming the law-abiding will always embolden the lawless. And a disarmed citizenry will always be vulnerable to tyranny.

The Founders knew it. Kirk knew it. And anyone who has lived under the suffocating strictures of gun-controlled nations knows it. This is why I know it! As an immigrant from a heavily gun-controlled country, I say this without hesitation: Second Amendment rights must be protected, because they safeguard other rights!

If we want fewer tragedies, the path is not disarmament. The path is virtue, fatherhood, community, and the courage of moral men and women willing to defend the innocent. Until every citizen becomes a saint, which, newsflash, my friends, is not happening anytime soon, the only practical safeguard is an armed, virtuous populace. So let the pundits misquote and the journalists rage. The truth remains: liberty comes with a price, but the price of surrender is far higher.

And for all of those who deliberately cherry-pick and mischaracterize the name, the words, and the memory of a young man who loved Jesus and who strove for biblical truth as best he believed, I say “shame on you.” Even if you disagree with the things he said, the truth still convicts us all. To say he supported the killing of children is an unjust lie. If you are choosing to deceive and denigrate his words willfully for the sake of either celebrating his death or destroying his name, those are dishonest and therefore evil acts. Stop. You are capable of better. The world needs better. Be better. Be honest. Be virtuous. Be holy. Belong to Christ. Seek His truth. That is the only way forward for us all.