WASHINGTON, BRATISLAVA. In March 2023, a 28-year-old gunman walked into his former elementary school in the American city of Nashville and killed three nine-year-old children and three adults.

However, even the deadliest school attack in Tennessee did not deter Republican conservative influencers from defending the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which protects the right to bear arms.

"Unfortunately, it's worth enduring a few gun deaths every year," said senior Conservative leader Charlie Kirk at the time.

It was his support for firearms that proved fatal for him - on Wednesday, an unknown assailant shot him during his speech at the University of Utah, which was attended by about three thousand people.

Kirk, 31, was one of the most prominent right-wing activists and a voice in conservative media in the US. He was also a close associate of US President Donald Trump, who publicly announced his death.

"The great, even legendary Charlie Kirk is dead. No one had the heart of America's youth, nor understood it as well as Charlie," he wrote on his social network Truth Social.

The United States has long had a gun problem, but recently political violence has been added to the mix.

"We're seeing more radicalized politics and more support for violence than before. Our country has essentially become a tinderbox," Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago who has been researching political violence since the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, told The New York Times.

Other university career

Kirk did not last long as a university student, but he soon returned to academia as a speaker.

At 18, he founded Turning Point, a nonprofit organization aimed at spreading conservative political ideas on college campuses, which are historically more liberal places. He founded it after Democratic President Barack Obama won re-election.

Kirk reveled in public debates, and his exchanges often went viral. His mission gradually grew as a result - the organization has branches at more than 850 universities across the US.

At the time of his death, Kirk was giving such a lecture at the University of Utah. It was the first in a series of events he enjoyed debating with students, who often held differing opinions.

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Popular bigoted views

Kirk was also a well-known internet personality, popular on social media and thanks to his podcast, which was listened to by millions of people.

The far-right influencer was fond of speaking out publicly against abortion, migration, and queer rights. He also liked to spread false information about the climate crisis, the coronavirus pandemic, and the fact that Trump lost the 2020 election due to manipulation by the other party.