The conservative movement and Charlie Kirk’s friends and family continue to grieve his brutal assassination last week. Still, there remains a significant law enforcement concern that others may attempt to copy Kirk’s assassin with their own attacks on politicians or political commentators.
A week ago, Tyler Robinson was a 22-year-old living in obscurity in southern Utah. Today, he has secured global notoriety as Kirk’s suspected murderer. Robinson has earned praise from far-left and other anti-establishment movements. The ensuing fear? That others might now believe their own assassination of a high-profile individual will grant them a page in the history books.
While this murder-history motive might seem insane to most of us, in a sense, that’s the point. A landmark U.S. Secret Service-led study published in 1999 assessed a large number of assassins and attempted assassins. The study found that varied mental health problems afflicted many of the study’s subjects. This difficult dynamic joins more practical ramifications of Kirk’s assassination.
Following one effected and another attempted sniper attack on President Donald Trump last year, Trump and Vice President JD Vance now live under unprecedented Secret Service security measures. Indeed, Trump’s state visit to the United Kingdom this week will see him give restored meaning to the original medieval protective purpose of Windsor Castle. Trump will stay at that 11th-century royal estate and rarely leave it amid Secret Service fears that he might be subjected to another assassination attempt. But the security ramifications of recent assassinations or attempts, such as those targeting Kirk, Trump, and Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman, will also precipitate real changes to how public figures operate in public. Expect an increased emphasis on countersniper capabilities by government and private protective details.
That Kirk’s killing comes amid a recent trend of high-profile assassinations and attempted assassinations exacerbates law enforcement fears over copycat assassins. As noted, Trump has suffered two assassination attempts in the past 18 months, with Thomas Matthew Crooks successfully shooting at Trump’s ear in Butler, Pennsylvania. Major media and social media coverage followed both incidents. In turn, prospective assassins might consider that if one person could nearly kill a former president, then a front-runner presidential candidate, they could kill their own less well-protected targets. Note here that Robinson appears to have been at least partly inspired by Luigi Mangione, the accused December 2024 assassin of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
The basic concern, then, is that of perverse psychology. The ability of morally warped ideologies to mobilize terrible deeds by once moral men and women cannot be underestimated. Consider the example of the Islamic State terrorist group. Employing slick, if sick, video propaganda and a claim of ordained purpose made credible to some by rapid territorial seizures, ISIS was able to recruit tens of thousands of disillusioned young men, and hundreds of disillusioned young women, to leave their homes and families. Many of these recruits joined ISIS not because they suddenly became expert adherents of the group’s fanatical Salafi-jihadist teachings but rather because they believed the group would give them meaning in their lives.
KIRK ASSASSINATION SUSPECT TYLER ROBINSON CHARGED WITH MURDER AFTER BEING TURNED IN BY FAMILY
A similar sense of disillusioned purpose appears to have allegedly motivated Robinson to betray the defining American value of vigorous debate matched to peaceful disagreement. And while the vast majority of people are disgusted by what he has done, there is genuine concern that others will regard him as a teacher rather than a terrorist.
I’d gamble it is more likely than not that we’ll see arrests by law enforcement in the coming weeks of people plotting new attacks on public figures.
