Kirk spread misinformation and voiced opinions that were contributing to making the lives of several demographic groups more unsafe, repeatedly, for years, to a massive audience.

Violence isn't the answer and I wish yesterday's event didn't happen, but his actions were a far cry from just "saying something someone might not like"

The first amendment is important, but it has boundaries, and Kirk made a living from being very close (arguably sometimes over) these boundaries. I think his message, which I wholeheartedly disagree with, will be carried on by others, as is their right. But I hope they do it in ways that are more firmly within the healthy boundaries of the first amendment. And if they don't, it should be the courts that decides if they should be penalized, not a lone armed civilian.

> opinions that were contributing to making the lives of several demographic groups more unsafe

Mere opinions cannot do this, even in principle.

As I'm sure you're aware, merely voicing opinions doesn't cause people to agree, either.

> The first amendment is important, but it has boundaries, and Kirk made a living from being very close (arguably sometimes over) these boundaries.

The boundaries are far tighter than you imply. Nothing I have seen him say comes anywhere close at all. Even the most uncharitable representations being spread around of his out-of-context excerpts would absolutely be protected speech in the USA. I am not a lawyer but I have spent a lot of time researching this. When Kirk and others like him say that US law does not recognize a concept of "hate speech", they are objectively correct. Wikipedia agrees:

> Hate speech in the United States cannot be directly regulated by the government due to the fundamental right to freedom of speech protected by the Constitution.[1] While "hate speech" is not a legal term in the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that most of what would qualify as hate speech in other western countries is legally protected speech under the First Amendment. In a Supreme Court case on the issue, Matal v. Tam (2017), the justices unanimously reaffirmed that there is effectively no "hate speech" exception to the free speech rights protected by the First Amendment and that the U.S. government may not discriminate against speech on the basis of the speaker's viewpoint.[2]

Note that this was a unanimous reaffirmation, in quite recent, very ideologically polarized history.

>"And if they don't, it should be the courts that decides if they should be penalized, not a lone armed civilian."

And what happens when the courts are to no longer be trusted for impartial or otherwise reasonable verdicts? We use randomness to control corruption in courts through the likes of juries, but First Amendment civil cases are almost always bench trials decided by a judge, or motions via summary judgement. Not juries. What's our fallback and our "check" there?