What Comes After the Gunfire?

So, let’s talk about the news that broke today. I don’t know who will read this, or how it will be judged, or what eyes will pick it apart once it leaves my hands. That’s fine. I only know that I can’t carry it silently. I need to let it out, to trace the shape of my grief in words, even if I don’t have answers.

Because this is not how it should have happened.

There is no healing in this. No restoration. The people who were harmed by his words, by the violence he nurtured and excused—what do they truly receive now? The absence of a man who never took responsibility? An unfinished ledger, written in anger and silence? Maybe it’s naïve of me, but I’ve always believed in the possibility of change, however faint—that even the most cruel could one day face their own reflection and say: I was wrong. I hurt you. I’m sorry. I want to make it right. That possibility is gone now, buried in gunfire.

Maybe even in front of his wife and kids. And yes, I know — this kind of violence has been inflicted on marginalized people so often it becomes background noise, something the world barely notices. But that doesn’t erase this. Another family now carries the weight of watching a husband and father die in front of them. That reality matters, too, even if it sits uneasily beside the truth of who he was and what he caused.

I know parts of this could be read out of context, so I’ll say it plainly: I don’t mourn him. I don’t pretend to know the full depth of daily terror others different than me live with. I’m not here to police anyone’s response; I’m only speaking for myself.but I cannot celebrate his death either. What I reject is the way violence steals accountability and fuels retaliation.

I don’t feel sorrow at his absence; I know it means fewer people will be targeted, fewer lives disrupted by his hate. But the way it happened matters. His death by a bullet denies us any accountability. It denies those he harmed the chance to confront him, to demand truth, to ask for even the possibility of responsibility. Instead, it replaces justice with vengeance, healing with retaliation. It closes the door on change, even unlikely change, and locks us all back into the same endless loop of violence.

And instead of peace, all I see is cheering on one side, mourning on the other, and from both sides, more calls for death. As if grief and rage were the only language we still remember how to speak. As if violence could ever carve out anything but another grave.

Yes, he was vile. Yes, his words harmed—but not in some abstract way. His rhetoric fueled harassment, violence, and policy that stripped rights from people like me and people I love. He built platforms that amplified hate and emboldened those who wanted us silenced or erased. The damage he caused will ripple long past his death. And yet, death doesn’t undo any of that—it doesn’t bring justice, it doesn’t restore what was taken. All it does is multiply the grief. It leaves behind children, family, people now carrying a new weight of loss. And worse, it risks turning him into a martyr, a symbol for vengeance. I can already feel the cycle winding itself up again, preparing to strike back harder, faster, crueler. And who will be the first to bleed in that retaliation? People like me. People like us. Marginalized people. The ones already marked as targets.

I know they would never extend compassion to me if it were my body on the ground. I know they would laugh, or cheer, or feel nothing. But that isn’t the point. The point is that I cannot let myself become their mirror. I cannot cheer for a death, any death, without losing something of myself in the process. Philosophers greater than me have wrestled with this for centuries: is violence ever the answer? Sometimes it is, maybe. Sometimes it feels unavoidable. But not like this. Not like this.

And I’m not saying no one else should celebrate. People will feel what they feel, and I understand that. For some, especially those who lived directly under the weight of his words and the harm he encouraged, his death may feel like a kind of release. That relief is real, and it isn’t my place to take it away. I can only say that I can’t. Because I worry, and in my experience I've seen, that every time death itself becomes the party, the fire burns hotter, the cycle spins faster, and the weight of that heat always comes crashing down on the most vulnerable first.

I know there will be people who say I’m being too soft, that refusing to celebrate a death is just respectability politics. And I know there will be others who will insist this means I secretly wanted him dead, that I’m glad for it even if I won’t admit it. Both of those readings miss the truth. I can hold two realities at once: that his death means less harm from him, and that the way it happened is unacceptable. Celebration won’t bring justice, and pretending he was good won’t erase the harm. I can reject both distortions and still stand in what I know to be true.

And I know—saying that out loud will earn me anger. I know some will be furious that I’m not celebrating. But I’ve never been able to rejoice in death. Not once. Not ever. When I tell people “I love you all” at the end of my posts, I don’t mean only those who nod in agreement. I mean everyone. Even those who would prefer me gone. Even those who shout for my death. I love them too, somehow. Maybe that makes me insane. Maybe it makes me delusional. But I know I’d rather be filled with love than hollowed out by hate.

Still, I am afraid. Afraid of what comes next. Afraid of the retaliation, of the backlash, of the quiet knowledge that marginalized people will be the ones who pay the first price. And I pity those who shrug it off with indifference—the ones with enough privilege to say “it doesn’t affect me.” What a luxury, to look away. What a tragedy, to use that freedom to care less, rather than more.

And beneath all of it, I grieve. I grieve the road humanity keeps choosing. We could have chosen empathy. We could have chosen accountability, chosen to heal what is broken, chosen to dismantle the roots of hate before they strangled us all. But again and again, the choice is violence. Again and again, the choice is vengeance. Again and again, the choice is harm.

And I don’t know what to do with that except to say it out loud. To grieve it. To hope that somewhere, in someone, the words take root in a different way.

To answer the question in the beginning of "What Comes After The Gunfire?", read my follow-up post, and click here

Note: I reject violence in all its forms. Nothing I write here is a call to arms, or a celebration of harm. These posts are warnings, not endorsements—an attempt to trace the patterns of power and propaganda so we might break the cycle, not fuel it. My writing is rooted in grief, in clarity, and in a stubborn refusal to give in to nihilism, cruelty, anger, or resentment. My love is for all people in this world—even those who would wish me harm.

The cycle of violence only ends where love begins.

This post is part of an ongoing series tracing the collapse of empathy, the erosion of truth, and the machinery of silence we’re all asked to serve. For the full arc—and why it matters now more than ever—start here with the full series overview.