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Conservative activist Charlie Kirk has died at 31, after being shot in the neck at an event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.
President Donald Trump announced Kirk’s death in a post on Truth Social. Kirk’s spokesperson Andrew Kolvet also confirmed that he had died, per The New York Times.
University officials said a suspect was taken into custody shortly after the shooting. However, officials later said that that person was not the shooter, and the shooter is not in custody.
Video posted online allegedly showing the shooting shows Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), speaking in a tent on a lawn. The tent is labelled “The American Comeback” and “prove me wrong,” with a large crowd gathered. A shot rings out, his body jerks, and a wound can be seen around his neck. A closer up video posted on social media shows blood pouring out.
Wednesday was the first day of Kirk’s “The American Comeback Tour,” in which Kirk was slated to travel to universities in several states to espouse his usual right-wing beliefs under the banner. Photos of the event prior to the shooting show Kirk sitting, surrounded by Donald Trump hats.
Kirk and TPUSA are influential in the right-wing space, targeting young Americans. TPUSA has chapters in hundreds of colleges and high schools, according to the group.
To these young groups, TPUSA spreads its far right beliefs, including racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia; homophobia and transphobia; and other ideologies typical on the right, like lessening restrictions on gun ownership. Kirk had also increasingly begun espousing Christian nationalist beliefs in recent years.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has noted TPUSA and Kirk’s ties to SPLC-identified right-wing extremists.
“Turning Point USA’s primary strategy is sowing and exploiting fear that white Christian supremacy is under attack by nefarious actors, including immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community and civil rights activists,” SPLC wrote of the group in a profile this spring. “TPUSA exploits complicated feelings of insecurity and anxiety to manufacture rage and mobilize support to revive and maintain a white-dominated, male supremacist, Christian social order.”
Prior to Kirk’s event, a petition had circulated requesting that the university cancel the event, but the university carried on, citing a “commitment to free speech.”
The motives of the shooter are currently unclear. Utah ranks low on the strength of its gun laws, according to Everytown, with very little restrictions on carrying guns in public, including on college campuses.
The shooting of Kirk, a close Trump ally, comes a little over a year after Trump himself was grazed in the ear by a gunshot at a campaign rally that killed an attendee. Directly after the shooting, Trump allies including now-Vice President J.D. Vance and Kirk himself blamed the shooting on Democrats and the left — though the shooter’s political beliefs were later revealed to be mixed, and he was registered as a Republican.
Shortly after Kirk was shot, officials reported that three people were in critical condition after a shooting at a high school in Evergreen, Colorado.
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