“We've never had anything like this in our history,” said Orem Mayor David Young. “You just don't expect something to happen that's never happened before.”
A manhunt is still underway for the suspect who killed Charlie Kirk with a single shot while the political influencer spoke at Utah Valley University. Kirk’s death has turned the nation and the world’s attention to Orem. The targeted killing in Utah shocked people. It seems contrary to the reputation of a conservative state with a Republican supermajority in the state Legislature and a large Latter-day Saint population.
Matthew Burbank, a political science professor at the University of Utah, thought about a discussion he had with his students on the day of the shooting. Some said they were surprised it happened at a nearby university.
“In terms of thinking about Utah, it's not a state that is particularly known for political violence,” Burbank said. “Clearly, we're not immune to it.”
Utah has seen recent high-profile cases of violence. Earlier this summer, Arthur Folasa Ah Loo was shot and killed at a No Kings protest in Salt Lake City. In 2023, when former President Joe Biden visited Salt Lake, an armed man accused of making threats against the president was shot and killed by FBI agents.
Besides those recent instances, Burbank said, politically violent incidents are few and far between in the state’s history. He pointed to Joe Hill, a man prosecuted for murder and executed, largely because he was a trade unionist. That happened over a century ago, in 1915
“But that was regarded by lots of people, obviously, as a circumstance that was kind of at least somewhat political violence, in the sense of sort of targeting somebody who seemed to be promoting unions and doing that kind of work,” Burbank said.
Kirk’s assassination doesn’t say much about Utah as a whole, Burbank said. Political violence has existed for a long time in the country, and mass shootings have happened in almost every state.
“That's what strikes people, I think, when they hear about this, is it doesn't seem like having somebody who is a really outspoken conservative be killed in such a horrible way in Utah, just doesn't seem to fit right,” he said.
There is a question of changing perceptions now in the wake of the shooting. Burbank pointed to the 2002 Winter Olympics as an, albeit positive, example.
“If an event like that doesn't change views of the state, and again, I think, even as dramatic and horrific as this event was, probably is not likely to have a lasting impact on how people view the state,” he said.
Another political scientist doesn’t see it that way. Damon Cann, the political science department head at Utah State University, said the shooting will change perspectives. It’s also a “reminder that, sadly, the nature of our country today is that acts of political violence can happen literally anywhere in this country.”
The country has a lot to work on in terms of recognizing and respecting political differences, Cann said. He added that “we need to find ways that we can express our opinions and our views and respect each other's humanity.”
That’s a call that’s largely been the centerpiece of Gov. Spencer Cox’s political brand. It wasn’t lost on the governor when he told reporters after the shooting that Utah universities have historically been a place where truth and ideas can be debated. He said it was foundational to the country’s most basic constitutional rights, but when someone “takes the life of a person, because of their ideas or their ideals, then that very constitutional foundation is threatened.”
To Cann, there will be a reckoning in the state, as leaders grapple with increased division and rhetoric in the wake of the shooting.
“I think there's going to be a lot of soul searching on the part of people in politics in Utah, community leaders and campus leaders,” he said. “I think there will be reverberations across the country as a result of this.”
With the 2034 Winter Olympics less than a decade away, Cann said the state will need to give thought to managing and securing large outdoor spaces.
“At the end of the day, when society becomes less safe for these kinds of things, it also becomes more expensive because we either have to reduce certain types of events and make them more exclusive, or we have to provide an escalated amount of security, which makes them more expensive,” he said. “And neither of those are necessarily desirable outcomes.”
Cann and Burbank also warned against divisive rhetoric so soon after Kirk’s death.
There’s a tendency to assign blame during events like these, Cann said, but the reality is “it's just kind of early to know what motives were.”
“So rather than escalating the rhetoric and blaming wide swaths of individuals, I think we can lower the temperature by focusing on a careful, lawful investigation of what happened,” he said.
Utah Speaker of the House Mike Schultz posted to social media the day after the shooting. He said political violence has no place in the state, and it undermines freedoms and beliefs that make America strong.
“This tragedy, here at home, reminds us that what unites us as Utahns — and as Americans — is far greater than what divides us,” he wrote. “If we let this moment deepen divides, then we will have lost twice.”
Read more from NPR: The killing of Charlie Kirk adds to a time of political upheaval and violence
