Dems Said Prayer Won’t Stop Violence, So Here Are Some Ideas

On Wednesday, after an assassin fatally shot conservative organizer Charlie Kirk in the throat while he spoke at a campus event in Utah, the reaction on the left was twofold. Online and in the real world, some celebrated Kirk’s death and said, in so many words, that he had it coming. Others issued statements, mostly vanilla, decrying “political violence” and expressing sympathies for Kirk’s family. A few said they were “praying.” Many conspicuously didn’t, instead blandly saying their “thoughts” were with Kirk and his family.

The compulsory statements ring pretty hollow for a few reasons. For starters, “thoughts” is a meaningless replacement for the act of petitioning God Almighty for comfort and healing. They’re coming from people who regularly vilified Kirk and his allies, using the same kind of inflammatory language Kirk’s killer engraved on the casings of his bullets. But it has also become obvious how much disgust many on the left have for prayer — so it’s weird to watch them play-act at an impotent secularized version of it, let alone the real thing.

Recall just two weeks ago, after a transgender shooter opened fire on Catholic schoolchildren in church, heartbroken Christians offered their prayers for the victims and their families. Prominent leftists excoriated them, mocking the prayers of not just horrified onlookers but the very prayers spoken by the victims before they were shot.

To mock our prayers as insufficient was a convenient way to redirect the conversation about the Minneapolis shooting toward the left’s favorite talking point in times of tragedy, gun control (certainly not the rising crisis of transgender violence). They told us prayer was not enough and that something had to be done to stop such tragedies from happening again.

The past week has proved them wrong and (kind of) right. It’s more obvious than ever how much our prayers are needed. Nothing in the world can comfort Mrs. Charlie Kirk better than her Lord and Savior, as I imagine she’s acutely aware. No power less than Christ can win over the souls of those who have gleefully cast their lot with evil and boasted of it on the internet. We should all be in constant and fervent prayer for Kirk’s loved ones to be comforted, for the hearts of those who hate him to be turned from evil, and for justice and virtue to govern the civic life we share with those who hate us. Even now, we’ve seen God in His abundant mercy use Kirk’s death to soften the hearts of strangers toward Christianity. Praise God for that, pray for more to hear and believe, and pray for faithful disciples to share the Gospel as prolifically as Kirk did.

But the “sending prayers isn’t enough” crowd is a little bit right, in the sense that posting manicured statements of regret is not enough to stop these tragedies from happening again. Generic calls for “coming together” will not stop killers who have been radicalized by a decade of revolutionary language, especially when many of the politicians now posting condolences are the same ones who spread lies about Kirk’s “extremism” and “fascism” and “hate.” Nor will they be stopped by the gun control laws leftists religiously invoke, for all the normal reasons and also because Kirk was killed by an old-school bolt-action rifle, not a scary-looking one.

To stop political assassinations like Kirk’s, we need investigators and prosecutors to go after the organizations that fund violent leftist street theater, as well as the dark alleys of platforms like Discord and Reddit where threats of violence against people like Kirk percolate. Employers must be brave enough to fire people who celebrate the murder of those who dare to hold different beliefs. Friends must be brave enough to call them out.

The countless anecdotes of people in educational professions who have gleefully celebrated Kirk’s death are just the latest evidence that our public schools and universities are hotbeds for advocates of political violence. We need an organized, devoted effort to clean house at those institutions, so they can’t be used to radicalize more assassins. We need involved parents training their kids in the truth and equipping them to resist the lies they’ll be told.

Laws are needed to stop crackpot therapists and doctors from prescribing estrogen to disturbed young men and testosterone to disturbed young women, and to stop them from grooming kids into transgender delusions in general. There is an obvious connection between violence and the transgender subculture, and not just because pumping unstable kids with hormones is a bad idea. Transgenderism and political violence share a sense of sadomasochism, as Chris Bray points out here, in that both want to physically harm that which they cannot change. From the Covenant shooting in Tennessee to the Annunciation shooting in Minnesota to the bizarre “Zizian” murder cult, we’ve seen that connection play out.

We need social and maybe legal consequences for media and other Democrats who fan flames of violence daily, by urging their listeners to get physical and recklessly slandering conservatives as Nazis, terrorists, and existential threats. That rhetoric has real results. Congressional Democrats told Axios a few months ago they were hearing from their base that “there needs to be blood.” A Rutgers survey in conjunction with the National Contagion Research Institute in April found a whopping 56 percent of respondents who self-identified as left of center said murder of President Donald Trump would be “at least partially justified.” On a scale of 0 to 7, with 7 being “completely justified,” 14 percent of left-of-center respondents said murdering the president would be a 7.

You can’t hear those numbers and not recognize the urgent need for tangible steps to diffuse the threat of left-wing violence. You also can’t hear those numbers and not realize that practical efforts won’t get us out of this mess without divine help. More than anything, we need the Gospel to convict those who have bought into lies, and turn their hearts away from wrongdoing. We need people like Charlie who are willing to share it.

So pray. Not just for comfort, but for courage and prudence to frustrate evil where it has taken individuals and institutions around you captive. Say prayers of thanksgiving for the truth that the evils of this world cannot deter the salvation of God or the kingdom of Heaven. And be ready, as Charlie was, to say “Here I am, Lord, send me.”

Elle Purnell is the assignment editor at The Federalist. She has appeared on Fox Business and Newsmax, and her work has been featured by RealClearPolitics, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Independent Women’s Forum. She received her B.A. in government with a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @_ellepurnell.