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| - In late January 2026, a claim circulated online that Turning Point USA CEO and cofounder Charlie Kirk once said that the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment was "not for hunting" or "self protection," but rather "to ensure that free people can defend themselves" from a tyrannical government.
The rumor spread in the wake of the killing of 37-year-old Alex Pretti at the hands of federal immigration officers in Minneapolis on Jan. 24, 2026, just two weeks after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good in similar circumstances in the Minnesotan city.
Social media users on Threads (archived), Instagram (archived) and Facebook (archived) shared a screenshot purportedly showing the Kirk quote, which allegedly read:
The 2nd amendment is not for hunting, it is not for self protection
It is there to ensure that free people can defend themselves if god forbid government became tyrannical and turned against its citizens
In short, the words were correctly attributed to Kirk, who posted the remarks to X (then Twitter) on March 3, 2018 (archived). The timestamp and content of his post matched the screenshot users shared in 2026.
Kirk's statement appeared to reference events at the time. On Feb. 14, 2018, one month prior to Kirk's post, a mass school shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which prompted a renewed focus on gun rights and the Second Amendment in the United States.
On the date of Kirk's post, Florida held "a rare Saturday session" of the state Senate to consider "a number of gun and school safety measures" following the Parkland shooting, according to an NPR report. That same day, Reuters reported on the arrest of a man suspected of fatally shooting his parents, which could have amplified the discourse around the accessibility of guns on that particular date.
The post in question was the latest of resurfaced comments from Kirk that spread online. For example, some of his alleged posts and comments, particularly about the Second Amendment and gun control more generally, recirculated online after he was fatally shot on Sept. 10, 2025.
Snopes previously investigated a claim that Kirk once said: "I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights."
In that report, Snopes uncovered an April 5, 2023, interview featuring Kirk at the Salt Lake City campus of Awaken Church that confirmed the quote but also included a statement that mirrored the content of his March 2018 X post about the Second Amendment.
During the 2023 interview, which is available to listen to on Awaken Church's PodBean podcast feed, Kirk said (starting at 39:28): "The Second Amendment is not about hunting. I love hunting. The Second Amendment is not even about personal defense. That is important. The Second Amendment is there, God forbid, so that you can defend yourself against a tyrannical government."
Therefore, not only was the quote correctly attributed to Kirk, but there were other instances of him repeating similar statements, making his opinions on the Second Amendment clear.
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