Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and close ally of President Donald Trump who played an influential role in rallying young Republican voters, was shot and killed at a Utah college event in what the governor called a political assassination. The shooter has not been found. Authorities say Kirk was killed with a single shot from a rooftop on Wednesday. Whoever fired the gun then slipped away amid the chaos of screams and students fleeing the Utah Valley University campus. The circumstances of the shooting drew renewed attention to an escalating threat of political violence in the United States that, in the last several years, has cut across the ideological spectrum. The assassination drew bipartisan condemnation, but a national reckoning over ways to prevent political grievances from manifesting as deadly violence seemed elusive. In a video message from the Oval Office late Wednesday, President Donald Trump called Kirk “a martyr for truth and freedom” and condemned the “demonizing” of political opponents in the U.S., even as he claimed the rhetoric of the “radical left” was “directly responsible” for the assassination of Kirk. The assassination drew bipartisan condemnation. The assassination has drawn bipartisan condemnation, but a national reckoning over ways to prevent political grievances from manifesting as deadly violence seemed elusive.