| If you can't tell the difference between the quote you've attributed to him, on the one hand, and actively encouraging assassination and political violence on the other, then I don't know what to tell you other than that they are categorically different statements. The statement "I think a few people dying in car accidents is a valid price to pay for being able to travel quickly in cars between point A and B" very obviously is not the same thing as the statement "I encourage people to kill themselves in their cars while driving" or "I am glad people routinely die in car crashes". It's expressing the balancing of two things, endorsing State A over State B (Guns vs No Guns) without endorsing violence itself; seen another way, it's endorsing A over B without necessarily saying A is the ultimate ideal - it's just that A is in that person's opinion preferable to B. Personally I think the benefits of getting vaccinated outweigh the risks and indeed I'd say the benefits of being vaccinated are worth the harms they may cause, even to myself; surely it's obvious to you that I can extol vaccine benefits over their known harms while simultaneously hoping that nobody is in fact harmed by them, even thought I know some subset of the population will be (by myocarditis, for example). You've conflated the expression of a preference for active malice. Apathy or acceptance of something is passive; incitement and encouragement of something is active. Surely that's obvious. As far as I know he never advocated murder through assassination or targeted extrajudicial killing. His views on guns and indeed the fact he was speaking about gun violence when he was shot may qualify as ironic, but his philosophical views on the availability of guns to the public were not tantamount to actively encouraging violence. |
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| ▲ | 8note 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | i dont think passive is a good description of going out of his way to influence politics to enforce that his position is law. improved gun control could have prevented his death, but he advocated hard against it, and fundraised against it. he may not have actively pushed for people to kill somebody in particular, be he doubtlessly influence people to murder students on campus, and put effort to making sure that people would be able to continue to murder people in schools. charlie kirk isnt an abstract concept who only said one thing ever. he's more than that one quote. | | |
| ▲ | avazhi 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | If you agree that he never actively promulgated violence and if you agree that there is a difference between (i) actively promulgating violence, or (ii) saying that people should have a right to own guns, then I'm sure you and I don't disagree so far. Look, I haven't lived in America in 20 years (dual Australian-American citizen), nor have I been back there since the mid 2000s. I live in a place that doesn't really have regularly occurring mass shootings and, personally, I do take comfort in knowing that almost nobody I am around and interact with in public is carrying a lethal weapon - for better or worse even pocket knives and pepper spray can't be legally carried around here. Having said that, while I disagree with Mr Kirk about guns philosophically, I understand the constitutional, legal, and philosophical arguments that some Americans make vis-a-vis the 2nd amendment, and I don't see how you could conflate those arguments with an exhortation to actively kill other people. We can both agree that if a judge interprets US constitutional law in such a way that he issues a judgment protecting the right to 'bear arms', he isn't also necessarily, by virtue of the ruling, promoting violence, right? Guns and violence aren't the same thing. Guns no doubt are used as instruments of violence in many cases, but at least in many respects they are also used solely for their deterrent effect, and it doesn't seem difficult to me to understand that you could support one (a right to bear arms) but deny the legitimacy of assassinations or extrajudicial killings. Indeed, several legal judgments from America have featured judges that are personally opposed to guns and who personally don't carry or own guns nevertheless finding that under American law they have to rule in a way that results in increased availability of guns to the public. That's very clearly not the same thing as advocating violence. | | |
| ▲ | greedo 4 days ago | parent [-] | | He promoted the stoning of gay people... | | |
| ▲ | avazhi 4 days ago | parent [-] | | So I looked this up, or tried to do so. I could not find the source for that quote. The closest I could find is this - not exactly an objective or authoritative source but we'll roll with it. https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/06/donald-trump-shares-stag... Is there more to the quote, or was he simply referring to a verse from Leviticus while illustrating the distinction between that verse and a later verse? If the latter then that's obviously not at all the same thing as 'promoting the stoning of gay people'. |
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| ▲ | Whoppertime 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The shooting was in a gun free zone. Passing more laws isn't going to accomplish anything if existing laws aren't enforced. |
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| ▲ | PenguinCoder 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > actively encouraging assassination and political violence on the other Quit putting words in my mouth. I am not encouraging violence or assassination of political differences. I merely said, his death is quite literally _live by the sword, die by the sword_. That's it. He advocated for freedom of firearms, and died by one. Nothing further to it to read into. This is not malice or extolling violence. Here's a couple of sources of the quote I attribute to him, since you don't believe me or are willfully, obtusely, ignoring what he said. https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-its-w... https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-gun-deaths-qu... | | |
| ▲ | avazhi 5 days ago | parent [-] | | You've got some issues with reading comprehension. I was (quite obviously) not referring to you there - I was pointing out that those are two different things (in reference to what Mr Kirk said, not you). I also never denied that the quote was accurate. I drew a distinction between his quote, on the one hand, and actively advocating violence on the other. The only part of this discussion that involved you was related to your apparent inability to understand that distinction. Getting the vibe this isn't going to be fruitful. Good day. |
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