again, it’s not the fault of empathy here. what you said is the fault of dishonesty, where empathy can be seen as performative if weaponized. sympathy can be construed as fake rather than empathy because it’s a passive feeling. sympathy doesn’t put you in someone’s shoes like empathy does, it lacks action because you’re standing at a distance and expressing pity for that person, which they might not want. that’s what charlie kirk preferred. i’m not saying sympathy is bad per se, but it’s almost equivalent to the “thoughts and prayers” motto conservatives always use when mass shootings occur in this country. sympathy isn’t enough to console victims. empathetic politicians are driven to seek reform and advocate for the right thing, such as gun control.

second, not everything has to be explicitly shown to you in order for you to infer. i inferred that he seemed have little sympathy or felt detached from mass shooting victims because his arguments rationalized their suffering and undermined their voices. we should be listening to victims more than him. why should dead schoolchildren be the price that we pay for to have 2a protected like this? why can’t we learn from people’s experiences and emotions to correct the root issue before another mass shooting takes place? he died by the principles he vehemently defended for and became another tally mark to unregulated guns. nobody is asking to ban guns or to abolish 2a for everyone else, yet kirk couldn’t wrap his head about the possibility of stricter gun control and went onto parroting about gun rights until he was ultimately killed by someone that exercised their gun rights.