For years, Charlie Kirk’s appearances at college campuses were major events — drawing thousands of students and attracting protesters, often staged to maximize his interaction with the crowds of young conservatives he inspired.
And each event came with unique security risks, which campuses around the country handled case by case, according to interviews with Kirk’s former security chief and organizers at several colleges who spoke to NBC News.
Kirk's assassination Wednesday is raising questions about whether more should have been done at Utah Valley University, in Orem, where roughly 3,000 people came to hear the conservative activist speak.
People said they were able to walk in without passing any sort of security checkpoint, even though scannable tickets were required.
Just 20 minutes after the event's start time, as Kirk addressed the crowd from under a tent, a single bullet fired from a rooftop about 200 yards away hit Kirk; blood poured from his neck. President donald Trump announced his death hours later.
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Gregory Shaffer, founder and CEO of Shaffer Security Group, which provided security details for Kirk and his conservative youth group, Turning Point USA, from 2015 to 2022, said guarding against that kind of threat would have been challenging for any private security team.
“It’s not just difficult; it’s virtually impossible. Unless you’re the U.S. Secret Service and you have counterterrorism, countersniper teams, you have people on rooftops with binoculars looking for snipers — you’re not going to see it 200 yards away,” he said.
But campus police could have taken additional measures beforehand, Shaffer said. Six uniformed officers were at the event, in addition to some plainclothes police officers in the crowd, according to UVU Police Chief Jeff Long.
“That’s the police’s responsibility to make sure those rooftops are clear, not the responsibility of Charlie Kirk’s security,” Shaffer said.
A UVU spokesperson in a written response declined to specify whether there was surveillance of rooftops but said the campus police department “discussed the security with the Kirk security team before the event and the analysis was that there were no credible threats. UVU is an open campus, no metal detectors were set up. It was in an open courtyard.”
When his group worked for Kirk, Shaffer said, it always met with local police in advance to share logistics. Typically, five staffers formed a security perimeter around Kirk while he spoke, scanning the crowd for threats.
Kirk paid for his security expenses out of pocket and did not receive any protection from federal or other state agencies, Shaffer said. He added that extra precautions, such as countersniper teams and bulletproof glass shields on the stage, might have kept Kirk safe from Wednesday’s gunshot but that they would come at a high price.
“You can defend against it with about a million-dollar budget,” he said.
Although Kirk constantly received threats online, he did not fear for his life, Shaffer said.
“He has had water thrown at him. He’s had a lot of bottles and fruit thrown at him, a hamburger thrown at him, things like that,” he said. “But I don’t think he expected an assassin’s bullet.”
The shooting has thrown a spotlight on how universities handle security for figures like Kirk, whose appearances often draw devoted supporters and vocal protesters. While some campuses implement barriers and bag checks, Utah Valley University’s outdoor setup offered few restrictions, a sign of the difficult tradeoffs schools face in trying to keep events both accessible and secure.
The police chief at Illinois State University, which hosted Kirk in April, recalled that Kirk preferred outdoor venues for his events.
"He was always wanting that kind of outdoor presence, and he wanted an interaction with the crowd," Chief Aaron Woodruff said. "He’s got his security team, but he’s also got his social media team. ... They’re wanting interaction."
"My perspective is I want to make sure the event’s safe, that he’s safe, and that all of our guests and visitors that are coming are safe," he said. "There’s always that balance, that tug and pull, between access and safety."
It is unclear what security preparations were taken in the lead-up to Wednesday's event. Coordinators at past college events said they considered barricades, enclosures and other safeguards.
Takumi Sugawara, a student who helped coordinate Kirk's visit to San Francisco State University in May, said that campus police worked closely with Kirk's security team and that Turning Point USA covered all costs.
Kirk's team initially wanted to hold the event on the campus quad. But the university “suggested that we should do it in a semi-closed place," Sugawara said, and the event was moved to a soccer field that was barricaded by a fence. Bags were not allowed inside.
"At the time, I kind of disagreed with the police department’s decision to kind of do a bag check and whatever, because we wanted attendance, but looking back, yeah, I think we made the right call," Sugawara said.
Students at Utah Valley University told NBC News that there were not bag checks to enter Wednesday's event. A student described how she and a friend “just walked in,” and another said that “there was no checkpoint to get in.”
It is not clear whether Kirk’s shooter ever entered the event space.
At Illinois State University in April, Woodruff said, a university review committee assessed the risks and concluded that given Kirk’s profile, police presence was needed.
Woodruff said police set up metal barrier gates to control traffic, enlisted a "demonstration safety team" of school administrators to manage potential tensions and deployed about a dozen officers.
Ahead of the program, Woodruff said, he reached out to other colleges that had recently hosted Kirk and consulted with Kirk's team about potential threats.
"I talked to my peers at other universities that had hosted him in the months before," Woodruff said. "The crowd issue is really the only thing that was really coming up again and again. It’s just the size of the crowd."
Woodruff said police opted not to use metal detectors or conduct bag checks, conceding that those measures proved difficult in the outdoor space Kirk's team requested.
dawn daniels, chief of police at Washington State University, where Kirk spoke in April, said she also consulted with peers at campuses that had recently hosted him. She said she coordinated with Kirk's team to move the event to a less crowded area on the Pullman campus, though she would have preferred it to be held indoors because outdoor events are more vulnerable.
"When they do open forums like that," she said, "it is hard to do security and make it locked down. I mean, look at Trump’s incident where he was shot; they had a lot of security. But even if you’re doing a lot of things right, if you have somebody who is determined to take a shot or do what they want to do, it’s really hard to stop that.”
The Kirk event prompted daniels' department to reassess blind spots in its security cameras and consider where to deploy drones at future gatherings, she said.
Rob d’Amico, a retired FBI agent, said Wednesday was the first time Kirk had faced a violent encounter even after years of public events.
“The first time it happens, everyone is shocked,” he said. “But now I think it’s really going to change the dynamic of everybody speaking that has political connotations, of security for it.”
