I don't think anyone being randomly murdered is good, even if it is of someone I consider an enemy. There are forms of political violence which may constitute self-defense, but there is no basis in which this killing in particular can be justified in that way. This is in addition to it being deeply ineffective at advancing any cause which may have been opposed to his politics.

That being said, while I acknowledge the wrongness -of the act in itself-, why on Earth should I feel empathy for Kirk? He himself believed that empathy was not a legitimate feeling through which events should be perceived or interpreted. He argued vociferously that occasional gun deaths of innocent people were the necessary cost of American gun freedoms.

Why should I feel anything at all except the distaste I have for murder as a social ill, and the cold comfort of the poetry in his death?