The Utah Valley University student who asked Charlie Kirk a question about transgender mass shooters as the right-wing influencer was shot to death has spoken out about the shooting.
Hunter Kozak, who is studying mathematics at the school, posted a video to social media on Thursday reacting to the news, particularly his role in the final moments of Kirk’s life.
“I don’t know how to make this video; it’s been a rough 24 hours. I was the last person to talk to Charlie Kirk,” Kozak said.
Moments before Kirk’s assassination, Kozak asked Kirk if he knew how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years, to which Kirk responded, ”Too many.” PolitiFact places the number at seven out of 4147 mass shootings since 2018, or a rate of 0.17%.
Kozak replied that the number was just five before asking Kirk if he knew how many mass shootings there have been in the U.S. in total in the past ten years.
Kirk responded, ”Counting or not counting gang violence?” Seconds later, he was shot and killed.
Addressing the person responsible and those celebrating the shooting, Kozak said, ”First off, you sick f—ing psychos who think this is the answer, it’s not. I don’t know what else to say. It’s awful, and a father doesn’t have his kids anymore. Charlie had two kids and a wife.”
He continued, ”Not to make this about me, but I have two kids and a wife, and if my one-year-old boy, like his one-year-old boy, will grow up without memories of his dad, it’s a tragedy, and it’s hard to grapple with. I’m part of a community that’s struggling to grapple with it right now.”
“People have obviously pointed to the irony that the point I was trying to make is how peaceful the left was right before he got shot, and that only makes sense if we stay peaceful,” he added.
”As much as I disagree with Charlie Kirk—I’m on the record for how much I disagree with Charlie Kirk—but he is still a human being. Have we forgotten that?” Kozak said, visibly emotionally affected by what he witnessed.
Charlie Kirk
”And if you’re salivating about what happened, don’t. I don’t know if any of my audience is, but if you are, you’re not part of what I’m trying to build here, at all,” he finished.
In a video posted in late August, Kozak collated data from thousands of mass shootings that have taken place in the U.S. in response to Kirk’s claims that a ‘trend’ of transgender mass shooters was emerging as evidenced by the shooting of two children at a Minneapolis Catholic school.
His research found that if transgender mass shooters were proportionally represented among the perpetrators of 5469 mass shootings, there would need to have been 27 for anyone “to even begin suspecting there was a trend.” Instead, he found 5.
He concluded that based on the data, “trans people are surprisingly and extremely non-violent.”
Part 2 of a video I made two and a half years ago… (original pinned in my profile)
”If that seems surprising to you, and it might, you need to understand that 6000 data points is an ungodly amount of data points, and you could cherry pick any sort of trend that you would like if you would just pull examples out.”
Kozak ended his video by saying, “I would love nothing more than to confront [Kirk] on his own turf about these questions that I have.” He also asked for donations to the Unf— America Tour that features content creators taking far-right influencers like Kirk ”head on.”
The tour released a statement on social media expressing their condolences to Kirk’s family and condemning political violence, while also explaining that the entire point of the tour is to have “good faith debates with our political opponents.”
”We were really excited to meet with Charlie Kirk for a scheduled debate a week from Sunday and are devastated by this outcome,” the statement read.
It also mentioned Kozak, though not by name, referring to ”one of the UFA debaters” who ”was debating Charlie when this happened and had to witness this horrifying, traumatic event.”
”Because of this, we are asking that people respect both our creators’ and our staff’s privacy while we grieve.” The tour has canceled all events until further notice.
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