Last month, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed, shot while speaking at Utah Valley University. In August, a shooter attacked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shattering its “blast-resistant” glass with 180 bullets. In June, former Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives Melissa Hortman and her husband were shot to death in their home by a man posing as a police officer. Earlier that day, the same man attacked Minnesota state senator John Hoffman and his wife. In April, the Pennsylvania governor’s residence was set ablaze. In March, the headquarters of the New Mexico Republican Party was set on fire.

The United States has long had a gun violence problem unique to the developed world. Since 2020, there have been over 500 mass shootings every year in the United States, and a 2022 study found that among 36 developed countries, the United States accounted for 76% of mass shootings since 2000. Despite these widespread shootings, commentators have long marveled that political violence remained relatively rare. Yet the spate of politically motivated violence this year suggests that we may have reached an “inflection point,” as former President Barack Obama recently claimed, as more and more Americans with access to lethal weapons turn to violence in order to achieve what they cannot at the ballot box.

Condemning Kirk’s assassination, Obama described these attacks as threats to “the central premise of our democratic system,” namely that “we have to be able to disagree and have sometimes really contentious debates without resorting to violence.” This has been a common refrain in recent weeks. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued a proclamation asserting that political violence would cause “irreparable moral decay” to the “Nation’s very soul.” The........

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