Editor’s Note: At VOX ATL, transparency and accountability are central to our work. Typically, our stories include bylines and named sources. In this case, both the author and interviewees’ names are withheld.
This decision was made solely to protect the safety of the teens who contributed to this reporting, given the risk of retaliation connected to the subject of this story. Teen voices should be heard without fear, and we take our responsibility to provide a safe space for young people to practice free expression seriously. The reporting process and editorial standards for this piece were the same as for any other VOX ATL story.
The day of the shooting was just like any other regular day. I was in my IB Biology class taking notes before I saw my phone light up, the words “CHARLIE KIRK GOT SHOT” appearing on my homescreen. I opened the app to see a GIF of influencer Trisha Paytas
cheering, followed by that text.
Charlie Kirk was an American conservative political activist and media personality, and the founder and executive director of Turning Point USA. This organization lobbied for high school and college students to spread conservative ideology within their campuses. Within my immediate teen bubble in Atlanta, there have been many mixed reactions, but none thought he was anyone to praise.
“I didn’t support him, but it’s still sad,” said a high schooler at North Atlanta, adding that “No one should be shot due to someone not agreeing with your political views. He had a wife and kids.”
Another student at Langston Hughes High School added onto this, saying, “I just feel like he didn’t deserve to die; he basically just died for having terrible takes/opinions, which is just a part of his First Amendment rights.”
“Personally, I did not agree with any of his opinions in any way, shape, or form, but gun violence is gun violence, and I am genuinely sad he lost his life. However, it is insanely ironic,” said a teen at Woodward Academy, going on to explain that a man who seemed unsympathetic towards school shootings was executed on a school campus.
Many other opinions were in the same vein as this, with an Atlanta college student at Georgia College and State University saying that “In my opinion, gun violence is never the answer, but Charlie Kirk spread the ideology that unlimited access to firearms were beneficial to society … Ultimately, his demise
was rooted in the ideology he promoted.”
“Honestly, my first reaction was that I laughed,” said an Atlanta college student at Clark Atlanta High School.
There were more unsympathetic responses. “That man spewed nothing but hate to anyone who wasn’t a cis[gender] straight white man with the same beliefs as him,” said a Westlake High School student. Another student at the school said, “The carotid artery in his neck exploding gained no sympathy in my book. As you look through his statements, he’s said many things supporting policies that fueled his death … Many of my peers on Twitter and Instagram felt the need to post condolences as if they personally supported or knew the man, despite him also spreading racist rhetoric. I think everyone was just trying to play the holier-than-thou game.”
But outside of these opinions, the overall reaction to Kirk’s death has been much more
polarized. Many people share the teens’ views on the situation. But others — often those in power whose values align with Kirk’s — have voiced the opposite sentiment. Public figures, like Jake Paul and Dr. Phil, have spoken out about Kirk’s death, mourning both him and the values he preaches, with Paul saying he died for “telling the truth.” On a larger scale, the government has also been almost universally sympathetic to Kirk, with the US Senate unanimously passing a resolution designating October 14 as the National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk.
So why do Atlanta teens seem to feel indifferent?
In April 2023, during a Turning Point USA event, Kirk made comments about the ethics of school shootings in the context of the Christian Covenant School shooting in Nashville, Tennessee that had happened just a week before the event, stating that: “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe.”
The following month, Kirk claimed that “Prowling Blacks go around for fun to target white people. That’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.”
In December 2023, Kirk denounced the Civil Rights Act and Martin Luther King Jr., stating that the Civil Rights Act was a “huge mistake,” and further elaborating that the act had started a “permanent DEI-type bureaucracy” regarding race, gender, and inclusion, according to a 2024 WIRED article, titled “How Charlie Kirk Plans to Discredit Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Act.” The article details the numerous attacks Kirk had laid on the late Martin Luther King’s legacy, stating that he was “awful” and that “he’s not a good person. He said one good thing he actually didn’t believe,” referring to King’s belief in equality for all races that led to the Civil Rights Act.
In March of 2024, Kirk promoted the idea of the Great Replacement Theory, an ideology that centers around the notion that non-white people, usually immigrants, are slowly but surely taking away jobs and social opportunities from white people in Western countries. He said, “The great replacement strategy, which is well underway every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.”
The following month, Kirk said that gender-affirming clinics needed “Nuremberg-style trials,” a reference to the type of trials held against Nazi Germany representatives.
In September of the same year, on a Jubilee debate show, Kirk also stated that he would not allow his daughter to get an abortion under the hypothetical circumstances of her being a 10-year-old who was sexually assaulted, saying that “the baby would be delivered.”
During Pride Month of that same year, Charlie Kirk had said God’s “perfect” law was: “If a man lies with a male as lying with a woman, they both committed an abomination; they certainly will die; their blood is upon them” (Leviticus 20:13), as a retort to Miss Rachael, a popular children’s content creator
who expressed support for the LGBTQ+ community during Pride Month and who recited “And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39) as a response to the backlash she was receiving.
During April and June of 2025, Charlie Kirk also made demeaning comments about the state of Islam in America, saying that Islamic areas in the United States are “a threat to America” and that “Islam is the word the left is using to slit the throat of America.” The following month, Kirk denied the claims that Israel was starving and creating famine in Gaza.
Even his last few words could be interpreted as racially charged, given his history of divisive statements. Seconds before his death, his final retort towards a person mentioning the increasing number of mass shootings in the last ten years was “Counting or not counting gang violence?”
Read: Charlie Kirk Memorial at Kennesaw State University Turned Hostile
