‘Words are not bullets’: Free speech activist rebukes rising justification for violence
In the aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk, free speech advocate Greg Lukianoff has issued a sharp rebuke of the growing cultural notion that speech can be equated with violence.
Writing for The Free Press Sept. 14, Lukianoff — a longtime First Amendment lawyer and president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) — warned that treating objectionable speech as violence paves the way for real violence in response.
In his essay, he pointed to disturbing social media reactions that seemed to justify Kirk’s killing because of his controversial views. This, Lukianoff argued, reflects a dangerous cultural confusion.
“Words are not bullets,” he said. “Words can’t strike a man from 142 yards away, causing a torrent of blood to erupt from his wound, sending him first to the hospital and then to the morgue. Only bullets can do that.”
Lukianoff noted that the law makes a clear distinction between speech and violence: even offensive or extreme speech is protected unless it directly incites imminent lawless action. This legal standard, he explained, exists to prevent those in power from deciding which ideas are allowed.
But on many college campuses, he argued, that principle is being steadily undermined.
“Campus culture has been eroding that line for years,” he wrote, pointing to the proliferation of slogans like “speech is violence” and “silence is violence” in classrooms and trainings. Lukianoff said that he has long pushed back on this idea — “conceptually wrong and practically dangerous” — warning that it encourages students to “see their own aggression as self-defense.”
In Lukianoff’s view, the idea that words are equivalent to bullets isn’t just misguided — it’s dangerous. It grants moral cover for real acts of violence. That danger, he said, came into full view in Utah.
“On that Utah campus we received the final proof that ‘words are like bullets’ is a poisonous and cruel metaphor,” he wrote.
Lukianoff backed his concern with data. FIRE’s latest College Free Speech Rankings, which surveyed nearly 70,000 students, revealed that over one-third believe violence is sometimes acceptable to stop a campus speaker.
“It should be zero,” he said. “A university that can’t persuade students to reject violence categorically is failing at the first task of liberal education.”
Lukianoff acknowledged his personal disagreements with Kirk but brought attention to what “too many of his critics never noticed”: Kirk’s commitment to showing up, facing criticism, and speaking in public.
“That takes time, patience, and courage,” he said.
As a path forward, he urged Americans to “bury the ‘words are violence’ cliché” once and for all. After Utah, he writes, the trope is not just false but “grotesque.”
Lukianoff concluded with a call to civic courage — the kind he saw in Kirk and in others who risk speaking in public forums.
“To honor a man who died while speaking, don’t gag his enemies or canonize his ideas,” Lukianoff said. “Rebuild a culture that says no idea is so sacred it can’t be challenged and no person so despised they can be murdered in cold blood for speaking. Highest tolerance for speech. Zero tolerance for violence.”
