# Charlie Kirk — "worth it to have the Second Amendment" > [!quote] "I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the [[Second Amendment]] to protect our other God-given rights." > — Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA event, April 5, 2023 ## Context Said in April 2023 by the founder of [[Turning Point USA]], one of the largest organizing forces in young-conservative politics, while defending an absolutist reading of gun rights against the toll of mass shootings. The line resurfaced widely in September 2025 after Kirk himself was shot and killed at a Utah Valley University event. ## Why this matters A receipt for the explicit cost-benefit framing at the core of gun-rights absolutism: the position that a baseline of annual gun deaths is an acceptable price for an unrestricted Second Amendment. It is among the most-cited Kirk quotes for documenting how the movement he built treated firearm fatalities not as a problem to solve but as a settled trade-off. The grim symmetry of his own death by gunfire made the quote a fixture of subsequent coverage. ## Verification - **Documentation:** [Snopes](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-gun-deaths-quote/) (confirms wording and date); [Media Matters](https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-its-worth-have-cost-unfortunately-some-gun-deaths-every-single-year-so-we). - **Status:** Verbatim, undisputed. ## Related quotes - [[Stephen Miller - domestic extremist organization]] — Miller and Vance built the September 2025 broadcast tribute around Kirk's killing.