UMich community reacts to death of Charlie Kirk and talks next steps in addressing gun violence

On Wednesday, Charlie Kirk, political activist and Turning Point USA founder, was shot and killed at Utah Valley University while on his American Comeback Tour. Turning Point USA at the University of Michigan held a vigil at the Diag flagpole to honor Kirk’s memory that evening. That same day, there was a shooting at Evergreen High School in Colorado. Both events have sparked conversation among the University and national community surrounding gun safety measures and political polarization in the U.S. 

In an interview with The Michigan Daily at the vigil, LSA senior Sarah Baldwin, vice president of the U-M Turning Point USA chapter, said Kirk’s death was a shocking tragedy.

“I think all the chapters are a little bit in shock because we know there’s so much political polarization in the country and that it’s been so tense in the last decade or so, but it’s just still shocking when things like this happen,” Baldwin said. “You never want to believe it can go that far — that we can be that angry with each other, that we can dehumanize each other so much. I think everybody hopes that, at the very least, this can maybe provide some kind of point of human empathy and community.”

LSA junior Aubrey Greenfield, March for Our Lives at UMich board member, said in an interview with The Daily that while Kirk’s death was highly publicized, she felt other victims of gun violence did not receive the same public sympathy. 

“I think it just shows how politically polarized our environment is right now,” Greenfield said. “It really shows how Kirk is a very big name in political media and because of that, everyone knows (him), but they don’t know that 4-year-old who got shot, or they don’t know that brother or that sister who got killed in a small community in California.”

Greenfield was also critical of President Donald Trump’s “Honoring the Memory of Charlie Kirk” proclamation, specifically his call to lower all flags to half-mast until Sept. 14, contrasted with his reaction to former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman’s death on June 14 and other gun violence victims.

“What about the families who lose kids or uncles or parents to gun violence every year?” Greenfield said. “The flags aren’t lowered for them; people badmouth them. People have conspiracy theories that certain shootings didn’t happen — where’s the respect for all of these kids and the outrage for all of these children to the same degree that there was for Charlie Kirk?”

Greenfield also noted that the Evergreen High School shooting was the 47th school shooting of 2025.

“On Sept. 10, when Charlie Kirk was shot and killed, on that same day, Evergreen High School in Colorado also had a shooting that wounded two students,” Greenfield said. “It just shows you that gun violence does not care about your political affiliation, it doesn’t care about your age, it doesn’t care about where you live. It comes for everyone.”

At the vigil, Baldwin said not all students in the University’s Turning Point USA chapter agreed with Kirk on all topics, but admired his commitment to public debate and dialogue.

“Debate’s important — he really tried to help foster that,” Baldwin said. “Whether you agreed or not, he wanted to have the dialogue to make sure we saw each other as people and had those different viewpoints and different feelings and things. People are people — they are not walking political party platforms — so we’re going to try to carry on that legacy.”

In discussing next steps, Greenfield said cooperation across the aisle is key, commenting on the United States’ large gun culture and arguing that solutions must establish a culture of gun safety while still protecting the Second Amendment.

“It also involves collaboration, and not just from both sides of the political aisle, but also with responsible gun dealers and owners to find solutions,” Greenfield said. “For example, one that has been proposed is having some of these gun dealers go through suicide prevention training to be able to recognize signs, so that if somebody comes in to purchase a gun they can go, ‘wait, we want to make sure you’re purchasing it for the right reason, and not because you want to harm yourself or others.’” 

Justin Heinze, faculty lead for Public Health IDEAS for Preventing Firearm Injury and associate professor of health behavior and health equity, said in an interview with The Daily the topic of guns has become an increasingly polarizing issue for people to talk about.

“My colleague — Allison Miller, in the School of Public Health — has found that framing the conversation in a safety context, rather than harm, is really important to parents, and when we think about creating safer spaces, they’re more willing to talk about their firearms,” Heinze said. “At a policy level, you’re trying to reach across both aisles to make sure that policies are recognizing the rights of gun owners as well as those of citizens.”

Greenfield said there also needs to be an emphasis on gun violence research in the United States, citing the $158 million in grants for gun violence prevention cut by the Trump administration, which subsequently closed the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. Heinze said these previous investments were hopeful for gun violence prevention initiatives.

“I think people increasingly recognize that this is a national issue,” Heinze said. “We were very encouraged over the last seven years or so to see the federal government investing in firearm injury prevention. We hope that will continue because, again, our role can be to try and bring data to these conversations when we think about what are the most effective ways to design and develop interventions to keep these multiple forms of violence from happening again.”

Public Policy junior Aidan Rozema, co-chair of College Democrats at the University of Michigan, said Kirk’s assassination sends a dangerous message to the nation and that he worries for the future of American democracy. 

“I think if we continue down this road, at some point in the future, we are going to have to take a hard look at our system and ask ourselves whether or not it is still a democracy,” Rozema said. “If we continue down this path of calling for retribution, vengeance, of superseding legal authority, of ignoring the norms that have governed our republic for the past 250 years, that is where we’re going to end up — where we look at America and cannot confidently call it a democracy.”

Daily Staff Reporters Aanya Panyadahundi and Dominic Apap can be reached at aanyatp@umich.edu and dapap@umich.edu.

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