EDITORS' CORNER
Key Takeaways
- Students laughed when pro-life leader Kristan Hawkins reported the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk during her event at the University of Montana.
- Hawkins expressed her horror at the students' reaction and emphasized the need for reflection on the desensitization caused by decades of legalized abortion.
- Similar reactions were reported at other campuses, with videos showing students laughing or clapping upon hearing the news of the shooting.
University of Montana students laughed Wednesday when a visibly upset pro-life leader on campus told them the news that conservative activist Charlie Kirk had just been shot, according to a video of the interaction.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, was on the Montana campus interacting with students as part of her “Abortion is oppression” tour when she learned that Kirk had been shot.
Kirk, the 31-year-old Turning Point USA leader, was shot to death Wednesday while conducting his own campus event at Utah Valley University.
“I told the pro-choice students surrounding me at U of Montana right now that my friend, Charlie, was shot. They laughed,” Hawkins wrote on X. “Horrific.”
In a video Students for Life later published on YouTube, Hawkins can be seen pausing her discussion with a student and looking at her phone with a troubled expression on her face.
“Is it bad?” she asks someone off camera before turning to the students, telling them, “Charlie Kirk was just shot on a campus in Utah.”
The student who she was debating immediately responds by laughing at the news. Two others behind him can be seen laughing, too.
When Hawkins asks why, he responds: “I don’t agree with anything. I don’t think it right to shoot him.” But Hawkins scolds him by noting that his first reaction was to laugh.
“If you think shooting Charlie Kirk is justified because you disagree with his political opinions, you need to study your heart,” she says later in the video.
“Our abortion culture has said that the most vulnerable humans in our world don’t deserve to live, and we get to choose whether they live or die. Abortion culture has led to a desensitizing of our nation where we think we can shoot our political enemies,” she says.
Later, when the pro-life leader asks the crowd of students if they think it was a good thing that President Donald Trump was shot last year, several respond by yelling, “Hell yeah!”
At the time of the video, the news had not yet broken of Kirk’s death.
Others reported similar experiences in posts on social media at campuses across the country.
A student at University of North Texas posted videos on TikTok of her classmates laughing as they watched a video showing Kirk being shot. The student said some students also clapped. The video was filmed before Kirk’s death was announced.
Kali Fontanilla, founder of the online school Exodus Institute, also posted a video on X showing several different people filming themselves rejoicing at the news.
Kirk, a political and cultural Christian activist who led a massive and effective outreach organization debating liberal students and educating on conservative issues on campuses across the country, was shot in the neck Wednesday as he spoke to a crowd of thousands.
A few hours later, authorities announced his death.
At the time of publication, the shooter was still at-large. On Thursday, the FBI published photos of a suspect and announced that the murder weapon had been discovered. The FBI also is offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the perpetrator’s arrest.
