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The Atlantic
Guns Are a Threat to the Body Politic
America must regulate guns not only to protect life, but to protect its citizens’ equal freedoms to speak, assemble, worship, and vote without fear.
March 8, 2021
Hulton Archive / Kean Collection / Getty / The Atlantic
Updated at 1:03 p.m. ET on March 8, 2021.
Why regulate guns? The standard answer is that gun laws can prevent needless deaths and physical injury. But this is not a complete accounting. As gun-brandishing protesters and armed invasions of legislatures demonstrate, guns inflict more than physical injuries they transform the public sphere on which a constitutional democracy depends. America must regulate guns not only to protect life, but to protect its citizens’ equal freedoms to speak, assemble, worship, and vote without fear. If legislators and judges do not focus on the freedoms that gun regulation protects, guns will threaten those freedoms. ....

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