The U.S. Supreme Court increasingly leverages a rigid interpretation of the Free Speech Clause to strike regulations that address campaign financing, health care warnings, tax disclosures, collective bargaining agreements, and consumer protections. History has become little more than a slogan that the majority periodically invokes but seldom accurately evaluates. That lack of nuance augments the justices’ authority to articulate absolutist-sounding rules to the detriment of legislatures’ exercise of traditional governmental functions. Jurists would do better to rely on a more proportionate and less categorical approach to decide whether laws impose direct or peripheral burdens on communications. The level of safeguards enjoyed by expressions should be gauged by their value to political self-determination, personal development, or informational contribution. The degree of protections that speech enjoys should be balanced against countervailing government interests, alternatives available to speakers, fit between law and public ends, and relevant history.

Intentional injuries claimed nearly two hundred lives every day in the United States in 2020, about two-thirds of them suicides, each a story of irretrievable human loss. This essay addresses the complex intersection of injurious behavior with mental illness and access to firearms. It explores what more can be done to stop gun violence while respecting the rights of lawful gun owners, preserving the dignity of persons with mental illnesses, and promoting racial equity. Strategies to prevent firearm injury in the United States are uniquely conditioned by a constitutional right to bear arms, the cultural entrenchment and prevalence of private gun ownership, and strident political disagreement on regulatory solutions to stem gun violence. Broad implementation of a range of complementary policies is needed, including community-based programs to address the social and developmental determinants of violence, improved access to a continuum of mental health services, firearm restrictions based on behavioral indicators of risk (not mental illness, per se), licensing for firearm purchase or ownership, comprehensive background checks for firearm purchase, and supply-side approaches to interrupt illegal firearm markets.