Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Gun violence in America has long been a wound that never quite heals, a constant reopening of trauma that we are asked to accept as the “price of freedom.” The irony, of course, is that the same people who have consistently waved off school shootings, grocery store massacres, church slaughters, and concerts turned into war zones as “tragic but inevitable,” are suddenly clutching their pearls now that one of their own, Charlie Kirk, has become the latest victim. For years, Kirk has said out loud what many on the far-right believe but dance around: that bodies in the streets are an acceptable cost of our Second Amendment. That freedom, they insist, requires blood. But when it is their blood, suddenly the narrative changes.

No one—left, right, or anywhere in between—wants to see gun violence unfold. Nobody truly wants to walk into a public space and wonder if it will be their last time breathing fresh air. That’s not freedom; that’s fear disguised as liberty. But America has been conditioned to normalize this cycle. A mass shooting happens. We argue for a few days. Politicians pick teams. Then we move on until the next round of lives are stolen. The cycle repeats itself endlessly. When it’s kids in Uvalde or Sandy Hook, Republicans say, “Don’t politicize it.” When it’s families at a Walmart in El Paso, the response is: “A good guy with a gun could have stopped this.” But now that it’s one of their cultural warriors, suddenly the tragedy deserves special reverence.

The hypocrisy is glaring. Republicans didn’t pause for a national moment of silence when Minnesota legislators were murdered in their own homes. They didn’t demand that America honor these public servants who were killed by the very violence Republicans so often excuse. They shrugged. They moved on. But now, with Charlie Kirk, they are framing him as a fallen soldier in the war for freedom, a martyr for the Second Amendment. It’s not about stopping gun violence—it’s about keeping score in the blood sport of American politics.

This team-sport approach to mass death has to stop. Gun violence should not be a partisan issue. The dead are not Democrats or Republicans. They are mothers, fathers, children, neighbors, and colleagues. Every time the story breaks, there are empty chairs at dinner tables and birthdays that will never be celebrated. Yet we act as though some lives deserve more outrage than others based solely on political affiliation. That rot in our national conscience is almost as dangerous as the guns themselves.

The saddest truth is that daily school shootings barely register anymore. Headlines about a teenager opening fire on classmates are now background noise. A massacre in a workplace barely trends for 24 hours. But when a conservative commentator is harmed, the story suddenly becomes symbolic, a rallying cry. If that doesn’t expose how broken our moral compass is, what will?

Gun violence is not a team sport. It should never be about “our side” or “their side.” It is a crisis of humanity, a crisis of policy, and a crisis of leadership. It must end—and not after the next tragedy or the next headline, but now. Because every day we delay, more bodies in the streets are treated as acceptable. And no human life should ever be reduced to a political talking point.