The events of last week have left me in a state of sadness that feels incredibly oppressive. I was not a follower of Charlie Kirk. In fact I knew little about him. I had listened to a few of his speeches and appreciated his charisma and dedication to his beliefs, but I found some of his ideas to be the opposite of my own. Still, I am a believer in our first amendment rights of free speech even as I know that some of what he said was so different from what I believe to be true. He had the same right to speak his mind as I do to write my blogs. When he was killed it felt terribly frightening to me. I thought of the horror of it for his wife and children and in a sense relived the death of my father who died so suddenly and unexpectedly at an age similar to Charlie Kirk. 

My worries about the continuous stream of violence in our nation were made even more dire when there was a rush to judgement regarding who had done the horrific deed. From the very start supporters of Kirk felt certain that monstrous left wing influences had led to the assassination. Even our president said that he was going to find the people and the groups who had done this and hold them accountable. Lots of folks were accusing the left of being monsters intent on destroying our democracy. The airwaves were filled with anger at a perpetrator that they only imagined before any form of proof was forthcoming. Some even insinuated that the shooter must have been the work of a transgender individual because one of the bullets contained a cryptic inscription of arrows facing different ways that appeared to be a code for changing sexes. 

It took time before the shooter was identified. It was the young man’s family who convinced Tyler Robinson to surrender himself and when he finally did all of the stories that a professional shooter from the far left had engineered the hit began to fall apart. Tyler Robinson is a twenty two year old white male who is a resident of Utah. His father is a retired sheriff and his mother works with disabled people. Tyler’s grandmother said that the family has been supportive of Donald Trump and MAGA although the shooter himself had registered as an independent and never voted in any election. 

The story became more and more tragic as we learned more details. Tyler had been an excellent student in high school taking advanced placement classes, getting good grades and earning a large scholarship to college. Those who knew him in high school said that he was shy but that most people liked him and sometimes he seemed like a favorite of the teachers.  

Instead of toning down the wild accusations that a hateful and violent left winger had been been the shooter much of the media still insisted that the young man had somehow become a rogue leftist without any real evidence to support such a thing. The only facts that they should have considered were that after only one semester of college Tyler had dropped out. They were able to report that at the present time he was living in an apartment only a few miles from his parents and was studying to become an electrician. Some of his high school friends mentioned that they had lost contact with Tyler. Gamers recognized him and reported that he was an active gamer who belonged to certain groups who competed with one another playing various video games. Some noted that they communicated with Tyler and he with them as well. 

Some of the gamers began to give meaning to the cryptic messages that the shooter had inscribed on the bullets. They insisted that authorities were going down the wrong path in insisting that they be taken literally. They pointed out that the series of arrows of one of bullets was the sequence on the Helldivers 2 game that designated the order of moves on the controller for dropping a bomb.

Evidently Tyler was not forthcoming even after being arrested but his roommate said that he and Tyler had become romantically involved with each other. Tyler had also told the roommate where to find the gun and had admitted that he had done the deed. There are even some reports that the roommate is transitioning to a female but there is still much to be explained to determine the motive of the young man who pulled the trigger.

I have always felt that there are definite signs when an individual is traveling down a black hole that is leading to violence. In the case of Tyler Robinson it sounds as though there were indeed indications that nobody seemed to see. He was after all a seemingly good boy but behind his facade chaos was brewing. Perhaps the fact of his leaving college so soon might have been the first moment to realize that something might be wrong. Maybe his excessive devotion to gaming while withdrawing more and more from society should have been a warning that he needed some kind of intervention. It’s difficult to influence an adult who is living on his own but his very slow progress toward a career should have been a reason to talk more with him, find out more about what he was doing, get him out of his isolation. Finally those gamers who were witnessing his decent might have told someone before the worst possible thing had happened. I suppose that they felt that Tyler was just going through a phase and telling someone would have been a betrayal. Still, we have to start caring for each other enough to do difficult things to help them when they appear to be foundering. I know how hard that is because I had to intervene with my mother over and over again because of her bipolar disorder. In the end it is worth every effort. 

My heart is still heavy. I don’t know if anything or anyone might have stopped the trajectory of the Tyler Robinson’s life but I suppose that many of us will always wonder about the “what ifs.” So many lives are shattered. So many people will never be the same. Hopefully we learn from this and quit the quibbling and shouting at each other. There are people among us who are vile and there are people among us who are hurting. We would do well to focus on using facts to find both of them before another tragedy unfolds. We do no good when we jump to conclusions before we have studied every single one of the facts. I suspect that we will learn much more when Tyler eventually is tried for his heinous crime. We might to well to wait to hear everything before pointing fingers and turning against certain groups.