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Driving home from work in the small Utah city of Orem, David Young tells Euronews that the area is filled with \u201call different faiths and types of people, and pretty much every type of person you can imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it is a family neighbourhood,” Young quickly adds.<\/p>\n
Young is the mayor of the 100,000-person town which became the centre of global media attention last week, when a conservative influencer and commentator was shot dead in front of a large crowd during an event at Utah Valley University, before their very eyes.<\/p>\n
Brushing off a near collision as he drove past his constituents, the mayor still sounded like he was processing the events of the previous week. <\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, we rarely have murders. We don’t have hardly any crime. We see it on TV, and we see other places that have it, but we don’t have that here. It\u2019s such a foreign thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
His words were almost identical in tone to local state representative Nelson T Abbott, who spoke to Euronews separately.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou hear about things like this across the world or across the country, but not in, not in Orem, Utah. This isn’t the way we do things here,” Abbott said.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t just politicians who spoke like this. One resident said that despite its size, people in Orem \u201cconsider ourselves to be small town \u2026 a college town\u201d vibrant and filled with young people. This, he said, just added to a sense of shock.<\/p>\n
In the wake of Kirk\u2019s murder, people on both sides of the political divide have become embroiled in an escalating war of words, a scuffle that people in Orem say they are trying to ignore.<\/p>\n
\u2018This doesn’t represent our community\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n During Euronews\u2019** long conversation with Mayor Young, he admitted that the role he has assumed after the killing has fundamentally changed. He was used to dealing with the local media, but not national and even international attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n Describing himself as a \u201cpolitician in theory, but not really,\u201d he had wanted to run the city like he had run his business, but recent events changed things dramatically. Young brought up a vigil for Kirk, which he spoke at in the town attended by thousands on 11 September, the day after the shooting.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were over 3,000 people that showed up for that. And so I was speaking at that. It was a difficult experience because to look at it out into that crowd and a lot of young people and just to see the sadness in their faces and tears in their eyes, I’ve never given a speech to a group like that.\u201d<\/p>\n The mayor called for unity, as did the congressman in Washington representing the city, Mike Kennedy, who spoke exclusively to Euronews and contended that \u201cthe story of America has always been the story of people who, though deeply divided, chose unity over bitterness, hope over despair.\u201d<\/p>\n A resident named Robert told Euronews that the town had felt relatively united in the aftermath. \u201cEveryone’s just sad that some guy who is a dad and a husband and was out trying to do what he believed in and was senselessly shot 10 blocks from where we are.\u201d<\/p>\n Politicians in Utah from all levels have often eschewed the vitriol of the wider debate nationally and online. The governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, was praised by residents, as well as both Republicans and, though more mutedly, Democrats for his response, calling for calm.<\/p>\n On the streets of Orem, at least, State Representative Abbott suggested people had heeded those calls. \u201cKids are still playing out on the street. You see college students walking down the road or riding their bikes. People are not really seeing the world that much differently.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOur response to this tragedy has been to stand together and continue that story (of unity),\u201d Kennedy concluded.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet, you don\u2019t have to go far from the city to find a less cohesive picture.<\/p>\n \u2018A lot of anger and hurt\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Just a few dozen kilometres north in the state capital, senior Democratic State Representative Sahar Hayes provides a very different picture. <\/p>\n \u201cIt’s kind of a scary time to be a Democrat in Utah right now,\u201d she explains to Euronews, describing \u201cexpletive-laden\u201d voice mail messages and even death threats she and her colleagues had received in the preceding days.<\/p>\n Although this has become par for the course for politicians on both sides today, she says the volume of abuse and extremity of its content was \u201cunprecedented\u201d. <\/p>\n In messages shared with Euronews, one person accused the state representative \u2014 who is the only openly gay member and one of a tiny minority of Democrats in the Utah legislature \u2014 and her peers of being \u201cmurderous, paedophile, weirdo \u2026 gay rights\u201d supporters.<\/p>\n The Democratic Party accounts for less than 20% of the entire legislature. Another called for a law in the name of Charlie Kirk to bring back public executions outside the legislature, offering tips on how to build gallows.<\/p>\n Hayes added that she and other members of the state\u2019s LGBTQ+ community have felt particularly targeted, due to swirling media stories about the shooter\u2019s relationship with his roommate, who is transgender.<\/p>\n \u201cI just think it’s unfortunate that Tyler Robinson\u2019s roommate is being dragged into this at all because we don’t even know if they have come out to their family. It really it feels like it’s painting a targeted narrative because they didn’t shoot anybody,\u201d Hayes pondered.<\/p>\n In a related point, she talked about Kirk\u2019s own language about the LGBTQ+ community, and concern that people were being targeted because they believed in her view that it was \u201cokay to not mourn somebody who actively fought against your own your own humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the state representative, the blame for this lay at the door of the Trump administration, whose language she saw as \u201cfanning the flames,\u201d pointing to the cancellation of the popular late-night show hosted by Jimmy Kimmel after he criticised Trump’s muted reaction to Kirk’s in a comedic monologue.<\/p>\n She wasn\u2019t the only one. Michael, a self-described conservative from a liberal-leaning family, who attended Utah Valley University and \u201cagreed with 75% of what Kirk said,\u201d argued that \u201csides were tending to default to the same mistake of restricting speech or any liberty.\u201d <\/p>\n He namedropped Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said she would \u201cabsolutely target\u201d those propagating \u201chate speech\u201d about Kirk.<\/p>\n Even representative Abbott was firm in his belief that \u201cgovernment does not have any role whatsoever in pursuing or charging criminally or taking action against people who have said inappropriate comments and made light of\u201d Kirk’s killing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Representatives of Trump’s administration, notably led by Vice President JD Vance \u2014 a self-professed close friend of Kirk’s \u2014 have by and large also called for national unity following Kirk’s assassination. <\/p>\n Vance himself said he was \u201cdesperate\u201d for it as he guest-hosted the Charlie Kirk Show podcast on Monday.<\/p>\n However, the US vice president also said that people who celebrate Kirk’s killing need to be reported and held accountable.<\/p>\n “Call them out, and hell, call their employer,” Vance said. “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”<\/p>\n Meanwhile in Orem, the issue of free speech was eclipsed by another constitutional amendment.<\/p>\n A call to arms?<\/strong><\/p>\n For its 100,000 residents, the city of Orem has four gun shops. As the mayor put it, \u201cPeople own guns around here. I own guns, and we believe in the Second Amendment. We hunt a lot. We also want them for protection.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Michael runs classes for handling weapons, including for children. \u201cEverybody on the street has a firearm and we go shooting regularly. It\u2019s just a neighbourhood activity,” he told Euronews.<\/p>\n Euronews spoke to representatives from all four stores, three of whom pointed to a rise in sales in the aftermath of the shooting at Utah Valley University. <\/p>\n Gunnies and Ready Gunner, which a representative from a rival store referred to as the \u201cgeneral convenience stores for guns,\u201d said the rise in activity was \u201csignificant\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe probably sold twice as many firearms as normal last week, almost exclusively concealable handguns,\u201d a store rep told Euronews, adding that it was a different demographic coming in.<\/p>\n \u201cI would say 80% of our customers are probably 40 and older. Last week probably half of everybody coming through the doors was under 25.\u201d Almost every one of them was a college student, they claimed. <\/p>\n “This changed a lot of our customers perspectives, that things like Kirk\u2019s shooting happen everywhere it was just kind of eye-opening for a lot of people.” <\/p>\n Michael\u2019s classes have now been fully booked out.<\/p>\n When Euronews spoke to someone at Ready Gunner, they told a similar story. \u201cOh yeah, sales have been way up,\u201d they exclaimed, before ringing off. \u201cI can\u2019t speak now, I\u2019m just so busy running background checks,\u201d for the many new customers, the rep said.<\/p>\n The US-based Pew Research Centre published a report this year stating that 47,000<\/a> people died of gun-related injuries in the US in 2023, the last year with complete annual data available. Across the EU, which has roughly twice the population, that number hovers just under 7,000<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n