Today will mark a week since the killing of Charlie Kirk. While many details — including about the gunman’s ideology — remain uncertain, it has become increasingly clear that this is a major moment in American history.

Let’s start here: who was Charlie Kirk?

It has been our experience that, prior to his killing, many people had never heard of him.

Kirk was 31 years old, and leaves behind a wife, two children and grieving parents. He grew up in Prospect Heights, Illinois, the son of a mental health counselor and an architect. He earned the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America.

Some refer to him as an influencer, a Christian, a conservative activist, and many other things — both savory and unsavory.

See, Kirk was simultaneously a victim, beneficiary and, perhaps in some ways, a partial creator of the way reality splinters in online discourse.

Many conseratives looked up to Kirk as a diplomat to the American youth — a man of faith who prioritized open communication on college campuses across the United States, as well as on his various online shows and podcasts.

Here’s a quote, by Kirk: “This silent majority are the Americans who love God, their family, and our amazing country. They don’t want their morals, their job, or their lifestyle threatened by the government or any candidates.”

Many liberals looked down upon Kirk as a hatemonger, a poisonous influence upon discourse that convinced their loved ones down a path which they perceived as darker or morally repugnant.

Here’s another quote, by Kirk: “If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us… You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”

In the wake of Kirk’s passing, we have seen — time and again — people from both sides of the aisle encountering each others’ viewpoint. Many conservatives only know him as the morally upright campus speaker. Many liberals only know him by his inflammatory viral rhetoric.

The truth, as it so often is, is more complex.

And amidst all of this pain and tragedy are the opportunists; the vultures seeking to turn an isolated event into a movement.

Nationally, many people in politics and large media corps are trying to use this moment for their own ends and their own priorities, and in all the noise, the truth gets lost.

The truth is a wife and kids without a husband and father, and whose lives have turned into an absolute circus as heartless coverage of their very personal and very real tragedy has spread like wildfire across a parched nation.

The truth is a gun who does not see victims of any particular side: it sees only the corpses of people who had real, full lives aside from their political beliefs.

In America, everyone suffers from gun violence. You can be white or black; rich or poor; straight, gay, cis or trans; conservative, progressive or independent; a preschooler, elderly, a mother, in the prime of your life; homeless, walking on the street, at work, at school, getting your groceries, at Walmart, in your home, on campus, attending a concert, attending church, eating McDonald’s, riding the bus, sitting in your car, dancing at the club, a state trooper, a doctor, a politician, a protestor, a criminal, a law abiding citizen, a Blackstone Executive, CEO of a major insurance provider, an activist, a singer, a content creator, even the President of the United States.

You can be anywhere.

You can be anyone, and you can still be shot.

We all sense that something is deeply broken in our society.

In politics, Republicans blame Democrats for eroding values. Democrats blame Republicans for persecuting marginalized groups.

But most of us — exhausted, disheartened, weary — just want it to stop. We can’t keep living like this.

Our opinion is simple: we must do better. Our challenge to you, reader, is this — let your love for our community speak louder than someone else’s hate. If you believed Kirk’s rhetoric was wrong or harmful, then the answer wasn’t violence. The answer was to out-love, out-care and out-build him. He didn’t deserve to die.

Charlie Kirk deserved better.

And so do the rest of us.

To quote the man a third, and final time: “We record all of it so that we put [it] on the internet so people can see these ideas collide. When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence. That’s when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil, and they lose their humanity.”

We have seen this bloodthirst in our society before. Time, and time again. It never leads to a happier world.

Right now, Americans are scared, and we are angry. In the last year alone:

— The New Mexico Republican Party headquarters was set on fire, as was the Pennsylvania’s governor’s mansion with Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro inside;

— Minnesota Democratic State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband — and even their dog — were assassinated;

— President Donald Trump was grazed by a bullet in Butler County;

— A shooter attacked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Headquarters;

— Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been fired upon in several separate incidents around the country;

— and that isn’t even counting the rest of the 309 mass shooting events in the United States, as of Aug. 31, nor the thousands of “everyday” violent events involving just a few people.

No matter what anyone tries to tell you, this evil is not new. It does not align cleanly with an ideology or a group of people.

Everyone — every person who has ever lived or will ever live — is a complicated mix of real thoughts and real emotions. And yeah, history has seen some real bastards — with, we are sure, more to come in the future.

But the more we hear that our opponents are stupid, immoral or even dangerous, the more we start to see them not as people but as enemies. That mindset strips away the most basic truth: that every one of us has intrinsic value. We all deserve the right to exist peacefully and pursue happiness. We need to stop debating whether our fellow human beings deserve dignity, and instead start debating their ideas. That’s how a free society survives.