(BIVN) – Hawaiʻi Governor Josh Green, M.D., issued a statement on Thursday, calling for an end to political violence following the shooting death of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk on the campus of Utah Valley University on Wednesday. 

Governor Green’s statement in full: 

“The tragic murder in Utah yesterday, leaving a young wife without her husband and two beautiful children to grow up without their father, the political assassinations in Minnesota earlier this year, the attacks against political leaders and their families in Pennsylvania and California in recent months and the horrific attempts on the President’s life, are all incidents that tell us that we must condemn all violence against one another and come together as a country to heal.

The world is watching. 

America is better than this and we owe it to our neighbors and our children to find a way to work together peacefully, in spite of our differences and deep disagreements on many issues. 

On 9/11 every year, we remember the violent terrorist attacks that senselessly took more than 3,000 American lives. And today, innocent civilians are needlessly dying every hour in war zones in Russia, Ukraine and Gaza, and also in the streets of America, all because we have lost some part of our collective humanity. 

We have come to accept some amount of violence against one another as though it’s normal or acceptable.

It’s not normal. It’s not acceptable.

It is time for us to change who we are, oppose all violence against one another, and find ways to bridge our differences as fellow human beings, not as polarized adversaries.

Our potential is extraordinary, but it is diminished by the violence that we have allowed to persist in this century.

I humbly pray that we choose to set our differences aside and find peaceful common ground together as one global community. We are capable of choosing this path forward.

It will take work and personal sacrifice to achieve, but the result can be the end to this cycle of tragic and senseless loss of life.”