This prime communicator with millions of followers lived by his word.

We’ve witnessed enough of it — or too much of it — in this country through the Easter 1916 Rising, the civil war that followed down South, and the 40 years of the Troubles up here that exploded thereafter.

But now another type of gun law, or lack of it, has hit the headlines.

The assassination of Trump cheerleader Charlie Kirk in Utah, USA.

Of course, our assassinations, of politicians or just innocent people, were illegal whether carried out by the Provos, the UDA or the UVF.

The perpetrators of such crimes shouldn’t have been in the possession of the lethal weapons in the first place.

But what about the United States of America?

There, it is legal for any adult to carry a gun, unless they are a convicted felon or suffer from mental illness.

And therein lies a connection to this place.

A connection which undoubtedly contributed to the sniper’s single shot which killed Charlie Kirk.

Because the law which enshrines the right of Americans to own and carry guns is carried in their Constitution, drawn up and signed in 1787.

And just like the American Declaration of Independence, penned 11 years earlier, a posse of Ulster-Scots politicians whose parents or grandparents had previously emigrated to the States were centrally involved in the drafting of and signing off of the Constitution.

And it was the endorsement and enactment of Section 2 of that Constitution which, almost tow and a quarter Centuries later, pulled the trigger on Charlie Kirk’s life, and death.

Because that crucial Constitution clause, in short, ‘protects the right of people to keep and bear Arms’.

And 31-year-old Mr. Kirk, the founder of the Make America Great Again ‘Turning Point’ pro-Trump organisation, certainly supported that.

He was an outspoken advocate of gun rights.

And buried in all the millions of column inches written about him, both complimentary and critical, one quote proves that.

He said of the gun law provision in the Constitution: —

“It’s worth it to have a loss of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.”

‘Some’ gun deaths?

The latest statistics from the US show that up until a month ago 302 people have been shot dead this year so far in ‘mass’ shootings (four victims or more) with over 1,300 victims injured.

So was Charlie Kirk describing those fatalities as ‘unfortunate’?

And would he classify his own demise, at the hands of a gunman, in the same way?

Or the tragedy, right down many years now, of weapon-wielding killers attacking kids in American classrooms or students on college campuses?

Even the psychopaths who stalked our streets under one terrorist guise or another never carried out atrocities like that.

As for the Second Amendment, I have personal and professional experience of that.

I was in Florida covering an IRA gun-running trial in Fort Lauderdale.

I wanted to test, and write about, how easy it was to buy a gun over the counter in that State.

So I went to a pawn shop, of which there are still many in the US, where they sold second-hand weapons.

I negotiated a price for a semi-automatic rifle.

But it was only when the guy behind the counter asked me for my driving licence that the on-the-spot sale fell through.

He realised I wasn’t a US citizen.

The Second Amendment only covers US citizens.

So no deal.

But it just proved how easy it is to just walk in off the street, if you’re an American citizen, and buy a lethal weapon.

And that is the provision in the Constitution of which Charlie Kirk was an ardent advocate. As were the Ulster-Scots who drafted and signed it.

So, as tragic and as abhorrent as it was, the assassination of the arch-conservative did not live by the sword and die by the sword.

This prime communicator with millions of followers lived by his word.

And by so ardently and actively supporting the Second Amendment, he died by his word.