The Truth About Charlie Kirk's Killing: America Failed To Address Melissa Hortman's Assassination

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On June 14, Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered in their home. State Senator John Hoffmann and his wife were attacked the same night. He survived, while she sadly did not. The killer carried a hit list of Democratic lawmakers and abortion-rights supporters. It was a dispicaple day of politically fuelled violence.

America barely blinked.

Months later, Charlie Kirk, a conservative firebrand and provocateur who built his career on division, was shot and killed while speaking at a Turning Point USA event in Utah. Another political assassination on American soil. Political opinions should not result in murder, no matter what those opinions are, this is what the rule of law is for.

The line that cannot be blurred is clear, it does not matter who the victim is. Hortman was a Democrat, while Kirk was a hard-right extremist, and yet, both were assassinated. Both murders are proof that political violence is no longer at the fringes of American politics, it is in the bloodstream, and likely has been for a long time. And yet the broken nation has not brought gun control into the spotlight of their media.

Cable news ran Hortman’s death for a few days, then silence. Kirk’s shooting has been covered as a spectacle, and even we are guilty of this at the Crustian Daily. But, already, the murder itself is being dismissed, and the context of Charlie’s words are leading to debates of ‘if he deserved it,’ or ‘who should be next.’ No one should be next, no one should have been first and none of this is normal.

That is the true failure; the refusal to draw a red line. The refusal to say that no matter who you are and no matter what you believe, killing politicians for their votes and views is intolerable.

Instead, America absorbed Hortman’s assassination without consequence. Now Kirk’s murder arrives, and still the system does not stir in the right way. Two very different people are gone, but the response is the same: indifference.

This is not about partisanship, as the USA seems to always want to believe when it comes to everything in politics. It is about the fact that the republic cannot function if bullets replace ballots and if assassination replaces argument. To excuse one killing because you disagreed with the victim is to excuse them all. To excuse them all is to accept that democracy no longer exists.

Hortman’s murder was a test. America failed. If nothing changes now, then the next names on the list will not shock anyone. They will only be the next headlines that vanish from the feed.

Political violence is not new in the United States. The country has seen assassinations before, from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King Jr., from Robert Kennedy to Harvey Milk. In those moments the nation stopped. Leaders addressed the people. There were vigils, marches, and legislative action. Assassination was treated as a rupture, not as a footnote.

The difference today is the speed of forgetting. In a digital culture that rewards spectacle over substance, political murder has become another passing trend. The story breaks, reactions flood in, hashtags appear, and then the churn moves on to celebrity trials, scandals, and viral distractions. The message that sends is devastating. If the murders of sitting lawmakers can disappear into the noise, what protection is left for any of them? What protection is left for the people they represent?

The media has failed to treat these killings as what they are: direct assaults on democracy. Instead, coverage leans into partisan framing or the drama of the moment. Hortman’s death was treated as a regional tragedy, not a national alarm. Kirk’s death is being handled as a sensational shock but without the depth of reflection it demands.

The contrast with trivial stories is jarring. Networks will replay footage of a celebrity meltdown for weeks. They will run hours of coverage on symbolic controversies in Washington. Yet two lawmakers murdered in their homes, and one of the most prominent conservative organizers in the country gunned down on stage, have not produced the same sustained coverage. The signal to the public is clear. Outrage is selective. Memory is fleeting.

Silence after political murder is not neutrality, it is permission. The failure to act, to condemn, to legislate, to draw red lines, is an invitation for more violence. If one side can dismiss Hortman because she was a Democrat, and the other side can dismiss Kirk because he was a reactionary, then there is no shared defense of democracy at all. There is only conditional outrage, which is no defense at all.