After Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist, was fatally shot during a political appearance on Wednesday, two thoughts occurred to Edward Padron, a 67-year-old locksmith in Brownsville, Texas. One was immediate. One was slower to rise.
A longtime conservative, Mr. Padron said he first assumed “a hate crime against a Republican” had just happened. But then he thought of other recent acts of political violence across the political spectrum, from the attempts last year on the president’s life to the fatal shootings in June of a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota and her husband. It seemed to him as if some terrible disease was gripping the nation, with no cure on the horizon.
“This could happen to anybody in this country,” Mr. Padron said, speaking from his home near the Mexican border. “I think that people across the board are afraid.”
That anxiety echoed this week in interviews with Americans, including a group of voters that The New York Times has been following throughout the Trump presidency. No matter their politics, people said they were deeply unsettled after the killing of Mr. Kirk, who had built a national movement promoting right-wing politics on campuses like the one in Utah where his life ended.
Some of those interviewed had not heard of Mr. Kirk. Others felt strongly about him and his politics, for and against. But virtually all agreed that Mr. Kirk’s violent death seemed to confirm a deep fear that something is seriously wrong in this nation.
It was not just the gun violence. In some sense, that has become a daily tragedy, lamentable but unsurprising. As several people pointed out, there was also a school shooting in Colorado on Wednesday.
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The post After Kirk Killing, Americans Agree on One Thing: Something Is Seriously Wrong appeared first on New York Times.
