Description: Following last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and a school shooting in Evergreen High School in Denver, political violence has rapidly spiraled out of control in the US. Eighteen-year-old Tyler Robinson was arrested for the assassination of Charlie Kirk, while sixteen-year-old Desmond Holly, succumbed to self-inflicted injuries after critically wounding two students at the Evergreen campus shooting. Robinson was seemingly a successful student which declared himself as politically independent while investigations into Holly’s social media activities revealed that he was radicalized by an unidentified extremist network with neo – Nazi tendencies. The rise in political violence according to several sources was due to the convergence of several socio – economic factors such as economic insecurity, the demographic racial transformations and the escalation of political narrative.
Impact: Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the Denver school shooting are only the latest tragic events in a chain of politically inspired violence stemming from several socio – economic factors which are threatening wider instability in the US. Division on an ethnic, racial, political and economic basis are plaguing the American demographic structure and are becoming nationwide social and security issues which are further exacerbated by loose legislature around gun control and decreased public safety capacities. The US is facing an unprecedented domestic crisis primarily originating from larger political divisions which can only be surmounted through enforcing an open public dialogue and stricter public safety and gun control measures. The Trump administration has so far reacted repressively in addressing these kind of social and security issues which indicates that similar and even more severe attacks could be expected in the upcoming period