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Charlie was a well-known supporter of the second amendment, and always championed gun rights as an essential freedom for American citizens. By extension, he also argued strongly that gun rights were not the main cause of mass shootings, employing the conservative ideological approach of “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” This is often exemplified by his quote in which he infamously said that having a few deaths by gun per year was worth it to uphold the second amendment. This again circles around to the core of his conservative values, which were centered around securing individual freedoms.

In 2013, he made a tweet in which he said that most pro-gun control arguments were so bad that they made him think "dude, are you trolling?" He would've been around twenty years at the time of this tweet.

Furthermore, he was also involved with the NRA (National Rifle Association). In 2018, he spoke to the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum, in which he said that there could not be a first amendment without the second amendment. He believed that you could not pick and choose what freedoms the constitution awarded to you, and that the second amendment was implemented to protect the American people from government tyranny. (2018 was a notable year for gun violence discussions, as it was the year in which the Parkland high school shooting occurred, which I'll come back to later.) Also in 2018, he referred to the fact that the multiple gun laws in place in Texas had done nothing to stop the Santa Fe High School shooting, which was perpetrated by Dimitrios Pagourtzis and caused ten deaths in that same year.

In 2019, he again stressed the point that banning guns completely would result in the "good guys" being completely defenseless, while only the "bad guys" would have access to firearms.

In 2020, he said outright that guns are not the main issue, but it is rather how children are being raised, their mental illness, and the foods that they eat. (More of the "people kill people" stance I referenced earlier.)

In 2022, he put a post up on his twitter account in which he said that gun control, vaccines, and face masks were put in place to make others feel superficially safe while actually only restricting the freedoms of others. (2022 was again, a prominent year for gun rights conversations after the Uvalde School Shooting.)

In 2023, while speaking at a TPUSA Faith event, he delivered his famous speech in which he implied that the deaths from gun violence were almost "sacrifices" to the second amendment. Obviously, this was interpreted to be incredibly tone-deaf, even if the intention of the statement was not originally entirely malicious. At the same event, he said that Americans should begin to focus on arming even more of the population to combat the rising gun violence epidemic, which is a common anti-gun control talking point/counterargument.

And finally, in 2025, while at an America Comeback Tour event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, Charlie was shot and killed while giving his final debate with an audience member, ironically on the subject of gun violence. The debate at the time was specifically about the prevalence of mass shootings perpetrated by transgenders, with the audience member pointing out that there were very few transgender mass shooters, and then asking Charlie if he knew how many there actually were. He infamously replied "Counting or not counting gang violence?" before being shot in the neck moments after. He was allegedly killed with a Mauser Model 98.30-06 caliber bolt-action rifle, which included a mounted scope. Evidence suggests that the accused, Tyler Robinson, was familiar with guns from his childhood and received the rifle from his family, that had been purchased legally. The gun was also in compliance with Utah state law. Many liberal or left-leaning people and organizations were quick to point out the irony that Charlie had died to an act of gun violence allegedly perpetrated by non-transgender white male, and that he had also seemingly been offered up as a sacrifice to the second amendment in compliance with his own words.

It is also worth noting that Charlie owned multiple firearms, but appeared to be a responsible gun owner and referred to keeping them locked away in a safe. He also was known to pursue recreational hunting, which is most likely what the guns were purchased for along with hobby and self-defense.

Now, here are a few prominent mass shootings that I have found him to address directly, descending in chronological order.

The 2015 Charleston Church Shooting- On June 17 of 2015, 21-year-old Dylann Roof attended a meeting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and later would open fire on the parishioners in a racially motivated attack. 9 people were killed and 1 was injured. Two years after the attack, Charlie made a tweet in which he stated that Roof’s mass murder was racially motivated domestic terrorism, and should be tried and prosecute as such. This is notable due to there being a popular narrative among conservatives at the time that the shooting was anti-Christian rather than being racially motivated, which Charlie did not seem to support or agree with.

The 2018 Parkland high school Shooting- On February 14 of 2018, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz stormed Majory Stoneman Douglas High School and opened fire on the staff and students, killing 17 and injuring 18 others. It is to date the deadliest mass shooting to take place at a high school in U.S. history. Charlie seemed to have a strong connection to this shooting in particular, as I found more content relating to him talking about it than any other mass/school shooting. This is partially because he was originally invited by several students to speak at the high school in Parkland, but ultimately a decision seems to have been made to not allow him to go on campus. He believed this was because of his pro-gun viewpoints. He also criticized local law enforcement's response to the shooting and blamed the FBI for not acting on tips they had received about the shooting prior.

The 2022 Uvalde school shooting- On May 24 of 2022, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos broke into the Robb Elementary School and opened fire, killing 21 and injuring 18. This shooting is notable for the extremely poor police response to the shooting, as they seemed to put more work into preventing parents from getting to their children rather than preventing Ramos from harming anyone else. Charlie heavily criticized the police for their role during this incident, demanding to know who ordered the stand down during the shooting and encouraging others to arm themselves because the police were too incompetent to protect the general public. But by far the most interesting statement he made was on the day of the shooting, in which he shamed people for attempting to politicize the senseless murder of the children that had already been killed at the time of that tweet. This is rather interesting because it was unlike him to express sentiment like that during other mass shootings, and also because he too would later politicize the murder of the children at Uvalde.

Lisa was reportedly a bohemian artist, whose works held an odd amount of camp. She died in 2011 from cancer, and at first her lasting estate was divided up between Tucker, Buckley, and Michael Vaughan (Lisa’s second husband). However, two years later, in 2013, Vaughan’s daughter found a written document from Lisa which stated the following "I leave my sons Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson and Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson one dollar each." This ignited a legal dispute over the shares of the estates, which did end favorably for the Carlson brothers.