A Partisan Right to Harm Others?

American politics is characterized by two trends: social problems are framed as issues of competing rights which tends to obscure the costs and obligations associated with the exercise of individual rights, and partisan sorting has led to partisan polarization. This study claims that when issues are framed in terms of partisan rights, partisans are likely to assert co-partisans’ “rights” to engage in socially destructive behavior but deny the same “rights” to out-partisans. We test these hypotheses using three framing experiments referencing both politicized and non-political issues. The results show that partisans deny out-partisans’ right not to wear a mask, but assert co-partisans’ right to smoke in public. When it comes to a partisan right to own guns over out-partisans’ right to be free of gun violence, Republicans both deny democrats gun rights and assert their own, while Democrats only deny Republicans’ right to arms.