America's constitutional conflict

The assassination in September 2025 of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has heightened attention on the relationship between political rhetoric and political violence.

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Even before police had identified a suspect, President Donald Trump blamed the shooting on the “rhetoric” of the “radical left.” The Trump administration has since acted to silence left-leaning speakers and is threatening to intensify its attacks on left-wing political speech.

But my decades of studying free speech law have convinced me that suppressing political rhetoric, even through social norms rather than law, undermines the discussion, debate and constructive disagreement essential for a healthy democracy.

Gun proliferation complicates the problem by making political violence much easier to carry out.

Political violence — by which I mean any physical attack on people that aims to achieve a political goal — harms democracy by shifting the field of political disagreement from debate to aggression.

Under the U.S. constitutional system of limited government and individual rights, political violence by the government ~ for example, government assaults on anti-government protesters — is among the gravest threats to liberty.

But political violence committed by private individuals or groups also corrodes constitutional democracy. In the United States, acts of private political violence against members of government and against ordinary people have both increased dramatically in recent years.

Political assassinations are the most vivid form of political violence. The Kirk assassination is only the latest example.

In June 2025, a shooter with a “hit list” ofleft-liberal targets assassinated Minnesota Democratic Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband. In December 2024, a shooter angry about health insurance costs killed United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.