Pretty sure Charlie Kirk was the target.
What he brought to the table was the youth vote. Prior to him and TPUSA, Democrats could rely on the youth vote overwhelmingly siding with them. The university campus engagement that he and TPUSA managed to achieve, in spite of the anti-Free Speech objections, is a major factor in the youth vote shifting rightward, in the last election especially.
He didn’t bring conflict, he brought debate. And once you start listening and debating, regardless of your viewpoint, you start bringing universities back to being a place of ideas, as opposed to indoctrination. That’s dangerous to those who rely on indoctrination to breed conformity. And when you are not able to silence those ideas with words, alternative solutions become your only option.
The question now is who, if anyone, can and will continue what he was doing? This assassination will inevitably chill this type of outreach. Knowing there might be a gunman with a high-powered rifle at an event is a powerful disincentive to a prospective speaker. But this attack can not be allowed to defeat open and honest discourse in this country. If it does, then we are already way down the road to more violence. ☠️