APPROXIMATELY 24 HOURS on from his being wounded fatally from a rooftop, the world now knows who the late Charlie Kirk was.

The disgustingly gory details have been seen by countless millions, courtesy of camera phones and social media. Prior to yesterday’s senseless tragedy, Kirk was instantly recognisable only to those of us who follow American politics avidly.

First and foremost, Kirk will widely be seen outside the United States as just the latest casualty of a uniquely gun-centric culture. To me, as someone who will forever be unapologetically proud to be an American, this twisted societal love affair with firearms is both sickening and depressing. Indeed, the dead man himself was a champion of the famous or infamous, depending on your perspective, Second Amendment to the US Constitution. Yet there is a lot more to Charlie Kirk and to what befell him than this.

And that’s probably why I found myself unable to sleep during the night as I processed the fast-breaking news of what had transpired on the campus of Utah Valley University. Charlie Kirk had been shot. Chaotic scenes ensures. Kirk had been stabilised. He lost his fight for life. Law enforcement had arrested the shooter. No, the purported perpetrator had not been apprehended. And this deranged person remains on the loose at the time of writing.

It has come less than four months after Democratic state representative for Minnesota Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated in June while Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife were shot at their home, and three years after the violent assault of Paul Pelosi, the husband of senior Democratic figure Nancy Pelosi. Last year also saw the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. The 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was killed by the Secret Service.

It was the reaction and analysis on traditional and social media to the killing of Kirk, a 31-year-old man with a beautiful wife and two gorgeous children he........

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