I suspect you may be testing us Professor. He made these comments as a formal representative of the University of Kansas to a captive, tuition-paying student body. While he may be “free” to make such statements, surely he must accept there could be consequences for making them.
In academe, there is a tradition known as "academic freedom" which basically holds that a professor cannot be reprimanded for saying something provocative in the classroom. I heard what the professor said. He was being flippant, but obviously not serious when he said people should be shot and that his comments should be stricken from the tape.
Academic freedom saved my butt once in 2020, during the height of the COVID pandemic when I jokingly said told my students that "the sooner they get it the better." There was a firestorm of protest and I was Twitter famous for about a week. You would not believe the vitriol I was getting from the pro-mask, pro shutdown crowd. I apologized for the remark and the university did not reprimand me based on its policy favoring academic freedom, even though the university president was a flaming lib.
Professors embellish all the time, and sometimes we cross the line. The students are grown ups, not children. They should be exposed to all manner of opinions, which, granted, they aren't. But shutting down speech you don't like is not a solution. It puts us in the same category as the commies.