New reporting on evidence found with the suspected murder weapon in Charlie Kirk's death raised additional questions about the case.
The Wall Street Journal reported that ammunition found in the .30-caliber hunting rifle believed to have been used in the fatal shooting was engraved with so-called expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology, according to an internal law enforcement bulletin and a person familiar with the investigation.
The report did not provide additional details about those messages, which were engraved on a spent cartridge still in the chamber and all three unspent rounds in the magazine, according to the report.
The shooter remains at large, although law enforcement officials say surveillance video captured images of the suspect while on campus at Utah Valley University showing a man who appeared to be college age.
The 31-year-old Kirk was fatally shot in the throat while debating an audience member on transgender people and mass shootings.
The newly reported details on the alleged murder weapon prompted a range of reactions on social media.
"All this suggests is that the shooter wants people to believe they're a far-left ideologue," posted Washington Post columnist Drew Harwell. "Maybe they are; without more evidence, we don't know. But a far-right 'accelerationist' wanting civil war, more hatred, more violence would do the exact same thing."
"Very curious what 'expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology' is supposed to mean. Emblems? Messages?" said extremism researcher Jared Holt. "I know the debate about platforming the words of killers, but this is not really helpful if we only have that nebulous description to go off of."
"Is their source different than the Rumble show host?" asked voting rights activist Max Flugrath, linking to a tweet by right-wing influencer Steven Crowder making similar claims about the ammunition found with the gun.
"This seems to match a leaked ATF bulletin someone gave Stephen Crowder too," added journalist Jacqueline Sweet.
"You cannot report the supposed DOJ memo about bullets with 'transgender ideology' without pointing out that there is no commonly understood meaning for that term and we have no idea what they claim the bullets *actually* said," argued journalist Marisa Kabas.
"Propaganda machine go brrrrr," mused Bluesky user bring on the dancing horses.
"Um, 'transgender ideology'? WTF is that?" wondered Bluesky user Rebel Blue. "I'm very curious as to who this source is. It seems a little convenient that this fits neatly into the rights' idea of their left wing boogie man."
"So the shooter could make one clean shot, escaped without a trace, but then decided to leave the gun in the woods where it would be found, and also wrote 'transgender ideology' on the bullets?" posted X user Keith Edwards. "And it's Kash Patel's FBI saying all of this? Ok."
"An instantly-leaked internal bulletin at the politicized federal law enforcement agencies just so happens to say what the Trump admin and its allies want it to say," added attorney Max Kennerly. "This is how it works in authoritarian regimes, the cops are too busy with propaganda and repression to actually solve crimes."
"'Transgender ideology' as a phrase is a giveaway," agreed astrophysicist Chandra Prescod-Weinstein.
"Printing this without saying what the supposed 'expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology' were is unethical and, frankly, untrustworthy," argued newspaper editor Ashton Pittman.
