I knew nothing about Charlie Kirk. I knew the name. I knew he was a Trump supporter. That is all I knew.

I didn’t know what his individual priorities or beliefs were. I still don’t. I didn’t know he had a podcast with millions of listeners. I didn’t know that much of his emphasis was on college and university students, or how popular he was on campuses. I did not know how much he spoke on campuses, and what large and excited crowds he drew. Now, I know more.

But I have an obvious question. Why would someone want to kill Charlie Kirk?

He was not a political official. He was one of hundreds, maybe thousands, of activists with political positions that he espoused. I don’t think he himself personally was a target of hatred. Rather, he seems to have been a personally well liked individual.

This was not an accidental shooting. It was not unplanned. It was not a question of passion taking control of an individual. As far as we know, the shooting was not the result a personal grudge, although of course this is possible. It was very targeted and not a mass shooting. It could have been much worse.

So what does this remind me of? It reminds me of the case of Leopold and Loeb.

You may remember them. Two privileged young friends, undergraduates at the University of Chicago, who in 1924 murdered 14 year old Bobby Franks, the cousin of one of them. They did not hate Bobby Franks. They pitied him, because he was a less perfect person than the two of them.

In fact, Leopold and Loeb thought a lot of themselves and their presumed superior strengths and talents. They were convinced that they could kill Bobby Franks and never be caught. They were going to prove their superiority by perpetrating the perfect crime. They were wrong.

Back to Charlie Kirk. Could this simply be another example of an attempt to show the shooter’s assumed lack of vulnerability and ability to bring about the perfect crime? If so, why Charlie Kirk?

As I understand it, Kirk was a big supporter of the Second Amendment. And the State of Utah is a state which takes the Second Amendment very seriously. I have read that Utah is a state where you can carry all sorts of weapons, open or concealed. No permit required. The weapons can be fully loaded. And not only that, but specifically, on public university campuses such as Utah Valley University, anyone 18 or older can carry visible or hidden weapons. (Private Utah universities can make their own rules; Brigham Young University, down the street, bans all guns.)

I think the public university rule is something that Kirk would agree with. But Kirk was not so naive as to think that the spread of weapons would eliminate gun crime. In fact, he wrote or said that there would be murders by guns, but that this was a price worth paying in order to protect the Second Amendment.

If you were a modern day Leopold or Loeb and you were looking for a prominent victim, might not you choose someone who has publicly made that sort of statement?

We will see what this investigation comes up with. Of course, I don’t know and there are many possibilities. But I wonder if the shooter was simply someone who had a point to make. That he could do this. The next question is whether he wants to get away with it or whether he wants to get caught. There are obviously disadvantages to getting caught. But if no one knows he did it…..why even do it?