Right-Wing Commentator Charlie Kirk Shot and Killed at Utah Event

By Jacob Weindling | September 10, 2025 | 2:17pm

Photo by Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

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Right-Wing Commentator Charlie Kirk Shot and Killed at Utah Event

“A single shot was fired on campus toward a visiting speaker. Police are investigating now, suspect in custody,” read an alert from Utah Valley University where right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk was at an event today. Deseret News is reporting that the visiting speaker shot was Kirk, and that “Bystanders report seeing Kirk shot near his neck during a Q&A with students.” Kirk’s health status is unknown as of this writing and we will update this post when we know more.

Kirk is a victim of America’s gun violence epidemic, which is never worth celebrating. This is a horrible thing that happened.

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Two words of caution to my fellow posters: do not assume you know anything. Two people tried to kill Trump last year and they both were Republicans. The Minnesota shooter last month wanted to kill both Trump and more than six million Jews. The horrors of gun violence do not map neatly on to our distorted partisan world in polititcs.

Second, be very careful about what you post online about this, lest you wind up on Fox News later tonight. That is a good rule of thumb in general, but the Feds know what we all post and will flag it and come to your house if need be, and this is not an administration I would want to mess with, and Kirk is a big player in it. This is a tragic moment in a nation that specializes in these kinds of tragic moments, and both your own personal incentive structure and sense of decency require some level of restraint right now, such is the burden of living in a country that treats endemic gun violence as just the background noise to our supposed prosperity.

UPDATE (4:10 ET) – Reports that the shooter was taken into custody were premature, as UVU spokesperson Scott Trotter released a statement saying that “On September 10, 2025, at 12:20 a single shot rang out in the quad near the food court on the Utah Valley University Orem Campus as Mr. Charlie Kirk began speaking at his planned rally. We can confirm that Mr. Kirk was shot, but we don’t know his condition. The suspect is not in custody. Police are still investigating. Campus is closed for the rest of the day.” Kirk is also reported by the AP to be in “critical condition” at the hospital right now. The person who was taken into custody earlier was determined to not be the shooter, and CNN is reporting Kirk was shot from a university building 200 yards away, which would put the attempted killer further away than Lee Harvey Oswald was when he shot President Kennedy, suggesting that if CNN’s reporting is correct, whoever did it knows how to handle a gun.

UPDATE (4:30 ET) – Charlie Kirk’s netowrk, Real America’s Voice, has a chyron up saying “Charlie Kirk has passed,” and Deseret News is reporting that Utah Speaker Mike Schultz confirmed Charlie Kirk is dead. The headline of this story has been updated from “Right-Wing Commentator Charlie Kirk Shot at Utah Event” to “Right-Wing Commentator Charlie Kirk Shot and Killed at Utah Event.”