In my latest at @nytopinion, I argue that the truculent response to @BetoORourke's mandatory assault weapon buyback proposal betrays a disturbing hostility to democracy on the right.https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/opinion/assault-rifle-ban.html …
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I support a legal right to own a gun in self-defense. But the recognition of that right poses real risks to others' safety. I think I'm obliged to persuade my fellow citizens that this is a right we ought to recognize. Trying to bully them into agreement just isn't okay.
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Way too much right-wing discourse is about why it's OK to immunize minority policy preferences from the scrutiny and authority of democratic majorities. It's a rejection of the republican ideal of popular sovereignty, the idea that political authority needs public affirmation.
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Deep and intractable disagreement about the good and the right is a basic condition of political life in a pluralistic society. Democracy is a tool for managing those disagreements to keep them from becoming violent.
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Dogmatic claims about inviolable rights are implicitly claims about the conditions for legitimate political authority and the proper scope of democratic decision-making. But people disagree about rights, and there needs to be space to peacefully negotiate those disagreements.
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Pounding the table and insisting that YOUR list of basic rights, and YOUR opinion about their shape, is definitive, that the conversation is closed, and if majorities try to legislate to the contrary, they'll have to have a conversation with your gun, is dangerously illiberal.
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If conservatives get to say "there will be violence" when somebody floats a proposal to take away especially dangerous guns , then liberals get to say "there will be violence" for taking away protections for pre-existing conditions, which will kill people.
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But they tend not to, because liberals are be wary of declaring disagreement out of bounds and withdrawing authority from democratic due process, even when they think those processes are unfair. This is civic virtue, not a tactical weakness to take advantage of.
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You can't say in good faith that it's JUST A PREDICTION that gun owners will wreak violence on cops enforcing constitutionally kosher, duly-passed democratic legislation if you won't to condemn it. You're endorsing it by dangling it out there to take a valid option off the table.
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The entire point of the Bill of Rights is to "declare certain questions off the table of democratic deliberation."
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No, it isn't. The entire point of the amendment process is that it's all up for grabs, but some things ought to require greater public consensus before being changed.
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Senior Fellow, Progressive Policy Institute.