The sun beat down on 3,000 eager attendees as Hunter Kozak approached the microphone at the bottom of the amphitheater to talk to Charlie Kirk. He seemed a little nervous, but cheerful, and prepared with his question.
It was September 10, 2025. From under his white tent across the stadium, Kirk leaned forward and greeted Kozak, a Utah Valley University student and liberal TikTok commentator. “Hey Charlie,” said Kozak, according to footage taken by his wife and shared with The Daily Wire, telling the Turning Point USA founder that he was hoping “to have a little more disagreement” than those who asked questions before him.
He then launched into his question: “A few weeks ago there was a transgender mass shooter, and ever since then, about three weeks later, the Trump DOJ said that we should start talking about revoking gun rights for transgender Americans.”
The crowd of students erupted into cheers. Six days earlier The Daily Wire had reported that the administration was “actively considering” ways to keep firearms out of the hands of individuals suffering gender dysphoria.
“I think you’re in support of this decision, yes?” Kozak questioned Kirk. “Is that fair to say? All right, great. So, do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?”
“Too many,” responded the 31-year-old TPUSA founder. It was only two weeks after the Annunciation school shooting, in which a trans-identifying killer had killed two children and injured many others when he opened fire on a Catholic school mass.
Kozak’s initial response to Kirk was drowned out by the cheering and clapping of the crowd. Then the UVU student can be heard saying, “It’s five. Ok, now five is a lot, right? I’m going to give you some credit. Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last ten years?”
“Counting or not counting gang violence?” asked Kirk.
“Great,” began Kozak, ready with a retort based on his own analysis of gun violence and trans-identifying shooters. But his response never left his mouth.
At that very moment a shot rang out. Kirk’s assassin had fired at 12:23 p.m. mountain time, hitting the TPUSA founder in the neck. By 2:40 p.m. local time, President Donald Trump had announced that Kirk was dead.
Kirk’s last conversation on earth centered on a topic that he had discussed at length, particularly throughout the end of August and beginning of September: the disturbing rise in transgender violence. Kirk was unapologetic about his stance, that trans-identifying individuals were targeting Christians, and, given their gender confusion, they were too mentally unwell to own firearms.
“If you are crazy enough to want to hormonally and surgically ‘change your sex,’ you have a mental disorder, and you are too crazy to own a firearm,” he posted on “X” on August 27, 2025, the day that the trans-identifying shooter, Robert Westman, killed Catholic school children before taking his own life.
“First Nashville, now this,” Kirk asked the same day, referring to the trans-shooter who targeted children at Covenant Christian School. “How many times makes a trend?”
Westman’s attack came just two years after another that trans-identifying killer targeted Christian school children in Nashville. Leaders of Catholic and independent schools in Minnesota had begged Governor Tim Walz to help prevent similar shootings, fearing that the next shooter would target one of their schools. That security funding was never authorized, a fact which became painfully evident after the Minneapolis shooting in late August.
Now five months later, the world is reeling from another transgender-identifying attacker, this time in Canada. The shooter, a man who believed he was a woman and wore a dress, opened fire on a rural school in British Columbia, killing ten and injuring dozens. It is yet another example of transgender violence, but the pressing issue that Kirk was opining on regularly now seems to have fallen out of consideration.
It was after the Minneapolis shooting that the Department of Justice was deliberating how to respond to this rise in transgender violence. The Daily Wire broke the news on September 4 that the DOJ was considering blocking trans-identifying people from buying firearms, reviewing ways to ensure that mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell,” according to one source.
The DOJ’s discussions centered on the acknowledgement that those who identify as transgender suffer from gender dysphoria, a mental disorder, which describes the sense of unease that a man or woman may feel if he or she thinks that their biological sex is mismatched with their so-called gender identity.
“Democrats have called for common sense gun laws for a long time,” one DOJ source told The Daily Wire in September. “This seems pretty common sense to me.”
The news sparked massive debate from both the Left and the Right, with many raising Second Amendment concerns about such a proposal.
Then, on September 10, a gunman identified by authorities as Tyler Robinson was charged with shooting Kirk in the neck. Robinson lived with his “transgender partner,” a male named Lance Twiggs who is attempting to transition to a transgender female. Twiggs had vanished from the public view for months but was just this weekj spotted living quietly in Texas as the investigation plays out.
While it is known that Robinson deeply disagreed with Kirk’s political views, it remains unclear whether Robinson specifically targeted Kirk for his views on transgenderism. The FBI’s investigation into the murder is ongoing.
But the fact remains that Robinson fired at Kirk as the TPUSA founder was addressing transgender violence.
A review by the Daily Wire found a steady stream of transgender-related violence over the past decade. And given this rise, many conservatives on the right were calling for closer examination of transgender violence at the time of Kirk’s death. Some wanted action, furious that officials like Walz had not taken the situation more seriously. Walz instead signed legislation establishing Minnesota as a “trans refuge,” promising to “protect those seeking gender-affirming care.”
Kirk’s death had stunned the world. He was a personal friend of many members of President Donald Trump’s administration, including the leadership of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice. Many members of the president’s cabinet and wider administration traveled to Phoenix, Arizona to commemorate Kirk with his wife and the Turning Point USA team at a massive memorial in Kirk’s honor.
Erika Kirk joins U.S. President Donald Trump onstage during the memorial service for political activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium on September 21, 2025 in Glendale, Arizona. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Five months after the shooting, it is not clear whether the DOJ discussions on banning guns for trans-identifying individuals have moved forward. The DOJ did not immediately comment on the matter to The Daily Wire. A source familiar with the Trump administration’s thinking said that the topic is not something that they have heard discussed since the Daily Wire’s original reporting in September.
Reached for comment on the matter, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said Friday that the administration is committed to “investigating, disrupting, dismantling, and prosecuting individuals and entities engaged in organized political violence and domestic terrorism.”
Jackson slammed left-wing organizations for fueling violent riots, organizing attacks on law enforcement officers, coordinating illegal doxing campaigns, arranging “drop points for weapons and riot materials, and more,” promising that the Trump administration will “get to the bottom of this vast network inciting violence in American communities, and the President’s executive actions to address left-wing violence will put an end to any illegal activities.”
Her statement did not directly address transgender violence or the proposed gun-ban, referencing the broader “domestic terrorism” at play in the United States. Yet there are a number of indicators that the administration is taking transgender violence seriously.
Aboard Air Force One on his way back from Kirk’s memorial, Trump told The Daily Wire that his administration was “very strongly” examining the string of transgender violence throughout the United States.
“You know, we’re looking at that,” the president said gravely, asking, “What’s the reason for it?”
“Yeah, there seems to be something,” he reflected. “But we’re looking at it very strongly. Something seems to be going on.”
Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to President Donald Trump and senior director for counterterrorism, told The Daily Wire in early September, before the assassination, that his draft U.S. Counterterrorism plan addresses transgender violence, asked whether there should be a transgender domestic terrorism label such as “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violence and Extremism” (TIVE) (a classification suggested by The Oversight Project).
Trump advisor Stephen Miller and Vice President JD Vance, in interviews that took place shortly after Kirk’s death, vowed to dismantle the domestic terrorism movement within the United States.
“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Justice Department, Homeland Security, and throughout this government, to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks, and make America safe again for the American people,” said Miller. Vance similarly stressed: “We have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years, and I believe, is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet.”
In December, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo to all federal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies that including “radical gender ideology” in a list of domestic terrorism threats.
“For too long,” her memo said, “rampant criminal conduct rising to the level of domestic terrorism—e.g., organized doxing of law enforcement, mass rioting and destruction in our cities, violent efforts to shut down immigration enforcement, targeting of public officials or other political actors, etc.—has been tolerated.”
“For some culpable actors, such as certain Antifa-aligned extremists, their animating principle is adherence to the types of extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology, and anti-American sentiment listed below, with a willingness to use violence against law-abiding citizenry to serve those beliefs,” that memo continued. “Federal law enforcement will prioritize this threat.”
Where federal agents encounter crime, they will act, Bondi wrote. And where they encounter or suspect domestic terrorism, law enforcement will refer these matters to the Joint Terrorism Task Forces.
