Stand-up comic W. Kamau Bell has made it clear he will not be mourning the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot last week at Utah Valley University.

In a column posted to Substack titled ‘Charlie Kirk Said, “I Can’t Stand Empathy.” Well, if he insists’, the Peabody and Emmy Award-winning producer used Kirk’s death to underscore his call for common-sense gun reform — while bluntly stating he will not be grieving.

‘Deep breath, everybody. We are now in deeper s**t than we already were as a country,’ Bell began. ‘I certainly won’t be gaslit into performatively pretending that Charlie Kirk was some sort of saint in death when he was actually just a truly awful person in life.’

Bell, who previously hosted CNN‘s United Shades of America, which explores issues of race and inequality, reflected on his own experiences facing hostility on college campuses.

‘I know what it is like to feel like you are personally in danger for what you have said or done,’ Bell wrote. ‘I know what it is to be targeted by the people you disagree with. I also know what it is like when being surrounded by hostility is a part of your job.’

Bell went on to explain seeing Kirk ‘getting shot and killed, presumably for his beliefs’ reminded him of how many times he’s imagined himself ‘in that same position.’

Stand-up comic W. Kamau Bell has made it clear he will not be mourning the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk; pictured in 2015

Still, Bell drew a sharp contrast between his mission and Kirk’s.

‘Charlie Kirk was like a used car salesman at the end of the fiscal year,’ he said. ‘He was literally giving the hatred away! His slogan might as well have been, “Come through! I’ve got a hatred for YOU!”‘

He added: ‘Charlie Kirk was a bad faith actor who spent all his time coming up with new ways to create more bad faith. He did it for money, for clicks, for s— and giggles, for clout, and, worst of all, he did it for his Dear Leader Donald Trump.’

Bell also mocked Trump’s announcement that he would posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

‘Going forward it will be the equivalent of 10 year old me getting a comb as the ‘toy’ in my Happy Meal,’ he quipped.

Despite his scathing critique of Kirk, Bell said the tragedy underscored the urgency of gun reform.

‘The lessons of Charlie Kirk’s death are simple. And we, as a country, should have learned these lessons a long, long, loooooooooong time ago. America needs common sense gun reform,’ he wrote. ‘Guns are too easily accessible. Many of the easily accessible guns, like the one used to murder Charlie Kirk, are weapons of war and not appropriate for everyday society.’

Bell, then, insisted ‘politicians have failed us all by not working hard enough to pass new laws and regulations around gun ownership.’

Charlie Kirk, a close ally of President Donald Trump, was hit by a single bullet while addressing a large crowd at Utah Valley University in the town of Orem on Wednesday; seen in May 2025

‘Ironically, Charlie Kirk would hate that,’ Bell added, pointing to a past remark from Kirk that gun deaths were the cost of preserving the Second Amendment.

Bell noted Kirk made that comment just a week after the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, which killed three children and three adults.

‘Damn, Charlie didn’t even have empathy for Christians,’ he wrote.

The comedian closed by envisioning his own death under similar circumstances.

‘If I die as Kirk did — at the hands of gun violence … by the hand of someone who hated my politics — I have one request: Don’t call it political violence. It is gun violence. Don’t express empathy without action. Do try to work hard to make sure I’m the last person to die that way.’

In an explosive essay, published on Sunday, the Emmy Award-winning producer used Kirk’s death to underscore his call for common-sense gun reform (pictured in 2017)

‘I cannot in good conscience express empathy for Charlie Kirk,’ Bell concluded. ‘If that bothers you, take solace in the fact that Charlie wouldn’t have it any other way.’

Kirk, close ally of President Donald Trump, was hit by a single bullet while addressing a large crowd at Utah Valley University in the town of Orem on Wednesday.

Investigators had appeared to be making slow progress in the manhunt for Kirk’s killer, until the FBI released security camera images of a young man.

‘We got him,’ Utah Governor Spencer Cox told a news conference Friday, identifying the suspect as Tyler Robinson, who had reportedly been confronted by his father over the pictures and then turned in.

Details about Robinson began to trickle out Friday, a picture emerging of a young man from a Republican family in St. George, a staunchly conservative city some four hours south of Orem.

Kirk co-founded Turning Point USA in 2012 to drive conservative viewpoints among young people, with his natural showmanship making him a go-to spokesman on television networks; seen on September 10, 2025

The father-of-two used his audiences on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to build support for conservative talking points

It is alleged that Robinson carried a hatred for Kirk and ascribed to a ‘leftist ideology’ that had grown in recent years.

Robinson’s family and friends said he spent large amounts of time scrolling the ‘dark corners of the internet,’ Cox claimed.

The governor added that the suspect had been radicalized ‘in a fairly short amount of time.’

Kirk co-founded Turning Point USA in 2012 to drive conservative viewpoints among young people, with his natural showmanship making him a go-to spokesman on television networks.

The father-of-two used his audiences on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to build support for conservative talking points, and to spread carefully edited clips of his interactions during debates at his many college events.