Charlie Kirk’s death shows America’s gun obsession has no off switch
Australia chose centrism and safety, America chose polarisation and bloodshed
Charlie Kirk is dead. Shot while giving a speech in Utah. His murder is not just another act of senseless violence in a country drowning in gun deaths. It is the grim culmination of a culture that prioritises the right to bear arms over the right to life, and an increasingly polarised politics fuelling a surge in political violence.
The irony of Kirk’s assassination is palpable. This is the same man who said: “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.”
The problem with treating gun deaths as a price worth paying is that sooner or later, someone has to pay it, and Kirk has just paid with his life. He joins hundreds of thousands of other Americans who have been shot dead in the last decade, many of them children.
Australia’s choice
Australia faced its reckoning in 1996 after Port Arthur. The government banned semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. Hundreds of thousands of firearms were bought back. Mass shootings stopped.
Why could Australia do this but America cannot? Because Australian politics lives in the centre.
Part of what enables centrism in Australia is its electoral design. Australia uses preferential voting (ranked choice) in single member electorates for the House of Representatives, combined with compulsory voting. This rewards political parties and politicians that appeal to the broad sensible centre rather than the polarised “base” of the fringe left and right.
America’s broken system
The United States electoral system, by contrast, rewards polarisation. First-past-the-post elections, coupled with voluntary voting and a two party duopoly pushes politics to the extremes. Polarisation is reinforced by media echo-chambers, gerrymandered districts, and the need to mobilise more ideologically committed voters.
The result is a political culture that doesn’t just tolerate extremism, but one that feeds it. Figures like Kirk have made a living on this polarisation, and we should not be surprised that they are now dying because of it.
It is reasonable to speculate Kirk’s killing was politically motivated, and unfortunately it is not an isolated event. It follows the recent assassination of Minnesota Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Paul Pelosi being violently assaulted by a home intruder looking for his wife House speaker Nancy Pelosi, and multiple assassination attempts on Donald Trump, to name only a few recent examples.
America’s broken system is why gun control, no matter how popular in polls, goes nowhere. It’s why commentators like Kirk can say something as grotesque as “gun deaths are worth it” and still grow their following.
Some argue, as indeed Kirk argued, that all these gun deaths are worth it because an armed population is the last line of defence against tyranny. That may have made some sense when tyranny meant redcoats and muskets. Today this argument is absurd. Citizens with assault rifles are not equipped to take on a modern military, whether foreign or domestic.
Liberty is best protected by strong electoral systems, independent courts, and an informed and engaged citizenry. That is how Australia has safeguarded liberty without guns. It is how every advanced democracy does.
No lesson will be learned
Kirk’s death won’t change anything. America has proven again and again that no massacre is enough. Not Sandy Hook. Not Parkland. Not Las Vegas, Uvalde, or Buffalo. Not bullets fired at politicians and presidents.
Australia chose safety. America chose gun violence. And until it chooses differently, the killings will not stop. Not for Democrats. Not for Republicans. Not for commentators. Not for presidents.
Those fighting for the Second Amendment right to bear arms would do well to remember that they may well have to die for it too, because the only people armed civilians reliably shoot are each other.
Jonathan Meddings is an author and advocate from Melbourne, Australia.
