What will Trump Say on Sunday about Gun Violence and Gun Control?

President Trump will headline the memorial event for the murdered prominent United States politician, Charlie Kirk. ChidoNwangwu raises key issues: What will Trump say this Sunday about gun violence and gun control? Will he be a conciliator or polarizer?

This Sunday on September 21, 2025, at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, in Arizona, President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, local and several national officials and many conservatives are scheduled to attend a major tribute-service event. They are coming together to honor the memory of Charlie Kirk, a prominent figure in politics and the leader of the Republican conservative organization, ‘Turning Point USA.’

Kirk was shot and killed on September 10, 2025, during his group’s event at the Utah Valley University campus in Orem, Utah. He was born on October 14, 1993. He’s left behind a widow, Erika Kirk, and two young children.

For many of the activists from the liberal left-wing and the conservative right-wing in the United States and abroad, the killing of Kirk reignited previous tensions and accelerated familiar disputations on some of the perennial issues of American politics, healthcare and business. I think that among those I have to mention gun violence, gun rights,  the freedom of speech, racial bigotry and many related issues.

We recall a 1959 speech, wherein John F. Kennedy stated that: “When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters—one represents danger and one represents opportunity.”

The world has since come to know that JFK gave the wrong interpretation of the Chinese characters. Regardless of the inadequate interpretation by the charismatic late President Kennedy, their remains the fact that different crises bring forth unique opportunities.

When such opportunities and situations emerge, the leadership and citizenry should rise above narrow expectations and reach to higher levels of grace and understanding. That is, despite the difficulties of the moment and the distractions and short term, partisan rhetoric of those who make money from the conflicts.

After Charlie Kirk was killed, Utah Governor Spencer Cox appealed to Americans to “log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member, go out and do good in the community.”

Some politicians and most Americans believe, as Cox does, that “social media has played a direct role in every single assassination and assassination attempt that we have seen over the last five, six years.”

Almost one week ago since Kirk was murdered,  Kaitlin Griffiths, the 19-year-old, who is the president of Utah State University’s chapter of ‘Turning Point USA’, noted that: “Social media is definitely a really difficult thing for our society…. You can’t even hold a conversation with somebody who doesn’t agree with your political beliefs — and I just think that’s honestly tragic.”

Unfortunately, it seems that the escalating tragic circumstances and practical weaponization of ideological differences have since become the harbingers of some of these killings.

Sunday, September 21, 2025, is only two days away. It seems like it is offering an opportunity, especially for the American President, Mr. Trump, to step up to a higher level of statesmanship, in deed, and language!

Will Trump surprise Americans and the rest of the world? Will he speak to heal recent and old wounds for those whose infants and elementary school-age kids were snuffed out by war-fighting guns/machines? Will he sing the songs of conciliation and better security?

-DrNwangwu, author of the forthcoming book, MLK, Mandela & Achebe: Power, Leadership and Identity., is the Founder of the first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper on the internet, USAfricaonline.com, and established USAfrica in 1992 in Houston. Follow him on X @Chido247