If the goal of Charlie Kirk’s murderer was to silence his voice, he failed.

All he did was ensure that two small children will grow up without their father and leave a widow to mourn her husband.

Kirk, the founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, will never again engage in conversations with young people on America’s college campuses, but his voice and message will carry on despite his assassin’s despicable act.

In fact, Charlie Kirk’s killer ensured that even more people will come to know what the 31-year-old conservative Christian speaker and political activist stood for and why he toured America to engage with young people — especially those who seemed to have no regard or use for his message.

Kirk’s assassin thought he was putting a target on the young man and that cutting him down in such a bloody, public manner would chill discourse and force others with similar views to swallow their words and live in fear.

“You could be next, so watch what you say,” seems to be the message behind the cold-blooded assassination Wednesday at Utah Valley University.

Instead, this cowardly act has shone the spotlight again on the growing issue of political violence in America.

It happened last year, when a would-be assassin tried to take down then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pa., and another stalked him near his home in Mar-a-Lago.

It happened late last year in another cowardly, murderous act in New York, when a man shot the CEO of a health care company in the back.

It happened a few years ago when a crazed Bernie Sanders supporter opened fire on Republican lawmakers during a softball practice for the annual game between the GOP and Democratic colleagues.

There have been other incidents over the years — far too many — in which politicians and public figures have been gunned down in very public manners.

We used to think that these things didn’t happen in the United States. Americans, we believed, were above political violence. But clearly, there are those among us who are more than willing to do the unthinkable because someone’s views differ from our own. Presidents, statesmen and civil rights leaders have been shot down by radical madmen periodically for more than 150 years.

Is this who we are? Is it who we want to be? We’d like to think not, but the killing of Charlie Kirk and the recent murders of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband — along with a lengthy list of successful and unsuccessful assassination attempts — suggest this is exactly who we are.

How do we change that? How do we make sure that the uniquely American right to free speech will not be chilled by those who would terrorize us for exercising it?

We start by tracking down Kirk’s assassin and prosecuting him to the fullest extent of the law. We seek justice for this young man’s family, who lost a husband, father and son because someone believed he had no right to speak his mind.

And we show all who would silence free speech that Americans of all political stripes will not cower in fear and remain silent in the face of terrorist actions.

That is not who Charlie Kirk was, and it’s not who the vast majority of his fellow Americans are.