- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
Kirk’s shooter, Tyler Robinson, has apparently turned himself in, apparently after confessing to his own father (?)
I’ve tried to capture the relevant bits of this extremely rapidly updating and currently in progress series of events.
9 a.m. EDT
While appearing on Fox and Friends, Trump said “I think, with a high degree of certainty, we have him in custody.”
Trump said authorities acted after receiving a tip from a minister who recognized the suspect from the images released by law enforcement.
The president said he believed the suspect’s father was also involved in arrest, but added that this information was still preliminary and the details could change.
9:15 a.m. EDT
Trump said he would attend a funeral next week for Kirk, “who should not be having a funeral right now,” when asked about his scheduled trip to the U.K. from Sept. 16-18.
9:30 a.m. EDT
The suspect was identified as Tyler Robinson, 22, from Utah, according to multiple reports citing people with knowledge of the investigation.
10:10 a.m. EDT
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox confirmed in a press conference Friday morning that a suspect named Tyler Robinson has been detained.
Apologies for this being a paywalled Forbes article.
The details of this are so stupid I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to jump straight to conspiracies before I really know much either, but seriously?
Maybe I just imagine political assassins to be more careful and intentional than they really are.
Assassinating someone means like a 99.99% chance of completely ruining your life and really fucking up the life of everyone you love. The truth is that almost nobody is noble and brave enough to do this just because they think it’s for a good cause. Less than one in a million people have that kind of conviction, period, for any reason. Now how many of them have that kind of conviction for healthy well-adjusted reasons? I would bet almost none of them. There are like 50 roads to travel to end up as a political assassin. Half of them involve doing it for your job, like with the government assassinating its enemies. The other half involve you bring completely insane or delusional. There’s literally like 1 road that is the road of just being so selflessly convicted in your beliefs that you are willing to ruin your entire existence for your cause (and this is regardless of whether your cause is actually good or not). I think this is why Luigi has stuck out as so powerful to people, because he may actually be a very very rare example of someone who derived their strong conviction without the aid of mental unwellness. (But even he got caught, so…) So yeah, I think most of the unpaid assassins are probably not mentally 100% solid lol. The fact is it is pretty much insane to decide to kill people, so it’s pretty much insane people that are killing people.
100%. You bring up some great points.
I have nothing to add, except I think Emma Goldman has a really good essay on political violence I think everyone should read. (though, not sure it very much applies to this particular act of political violence)
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1917/political-violence.htm
The political assassins that dont get caught also make their assassinations not look like assassinations.
From what I am hearing from Kyle Kulinski…
The kid is very academically bright, possibly autistic, obviously into online uwu meme culture… appears to be from a well-off Republican family, which involved a good deal of being raised with guns, definitely is not registered as a Democrat, may have himself donated to Trump’s campaign, wore a Trump costume to a Halloween party… and also wrote Bella Ciao lyrics on a casing.
So… I am going with ‘very confused, nerdy, ancap kid with above average marksman skills for someone his age and no military training’.
… But thats all extremely speculative at this point.
He appears to have literally done this for the lulz, and then become overwhelmed with guilt.
I do not know what to make out of this other than our society is doomed.
I would be incredibly wary of any descriptions of his character or any details that aren’t easily corroborated by trusted sources. There is a LOT of misinformation out there.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2jaemvpgujnb5nzi66rcxhse/post/3lynjvt3yyx2q is a good breakdown which is as cited as anything gets these days.
Which lines up with what many others are saying: He is a “groyper” and seemed more alligned with the fuentes alt-right than the kirk alt-right and this seems like the sadly logical outcome of heavily armed children getting radicalized every second of the day.
Yeah, I will literally go back and bold the part where I said ‘this is all speculative.’
I guess I trust Kyle when it comes to actually sourcing things.
But yeah, lets get as much citations and context as possible, now that this is a few hours older and more is being written.
People are deeply stupid. Even “This is pure speculation” rapidly becomes Fact through the game of telephone. It is best to avoid it as much as possible in situations like this. Even “he might have been autistic” very clearly lines up with certain fascist agendas.
I won’t be surprised if he used fediverse/Lemmy do we know what his major is?
Oh god please don’t say that, this reeeeally does not need to be the way normies learn about lemmy/fediverse oooh no.
His major?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2025/09/12/what-we-know-charlie-kirk-shooting-suspect/86091474007/
Undetermined.
He… seems like he dropped out, or more like bounced off of going to college… ???
Yeah… certainly looking like some kind of perma online, basement dwelling, probably autisitc, uber dork.
Which I say lovingly, in reference to most of us here.
But yeah… If he bounced off after one semester, he would not have even gotten to declaring a major, I don’t think.
I seriously hope that he doesn’t have some kind of mental health issue because Kennedy will have a big excuse to come after anyone who has a mental health diagnosis no matter how minor their condition is.