Viral videos show that Charlie Kirk was speaking about gun violence and mass shootings when he was fatally shot during an event in Orem, Utah, on Wednesday (Sept. 10).
Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA, was holding a political event at Utah Valley University when he was struck with a bullet in the neck. Following the shooting, Kirk was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead at age 31.
The media personality frequently espoused right-wing talking points, including advocating for Second Amendment gun rights. A video reviewed by Complex shows that in the moments before he was shot, Kirk was addressing a crowd member’s question about mass shootings.
“Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America in the last 10 years?” the person asked.
“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk responded in the seconds before a bullet struck him in the neck.
In response to an earlier question, Kirk said “too many” transgender Americans had been mass shooters in the previous 10 years.
Snopes reported in August that there was not a disproportionate number of transgender people who committed shootings in relation to the number of transgender people in the overall population.
There have been 300 mass shootings in the U.S. 2025, according to the Gun Violence Archive, the lowest number of shootings since 2019. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that nearly 47,000 people overall died from gun-related deaths in 2023, the most recent year that data is available.
The same day that Kirk was shot and killed, a shooting at a high school in Evergreen, Colorado, left three students in critical condition, including the suspected shooter, according to The New York Times.
President Donald Trump, who appointed Kirk to the United States Air Force Academy Board of Visitors earlier this year, shared his condolences over Kirk’s death in a statement on Truth Social.
"No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us,” Trump said.
