The threat of political violence in America can no longer be ignored. The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump removes any doubt about the precariousness of our current moment. As policymakers contemplate how to respond, we must confront the problem head on with solutions that strengthen, not restrict, our core civil liberties of privacy and free speech.

Even before last week’s shooting, the evidence that America had a problem with political violence was growing. In 2022, an attacker targeting then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi broke into Pelosi’s San Francisco home and brutally assaulted her husband. That same year, a man traveled to the Maryland home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh with a gun, knife, and murderous intentions. We have seen violence break out at protests over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, arson attempts on pro-life pregnancy centers in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, and a shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs in 2015.

Thankfully, the most recent attempts failed to achieve their objective, but they took a tremendous toll. Paul Pelosi suffered severe injuries from being attacked, Trump was shot in his right ear, and, most tragically, a father of two who attended Trump’s rally was killed in the crowd while others were injured. No American should sustain injuries or lose their life exercising their First Amendment right to support a candidate by attending a political rally.

In the aftermath of these horrific events, Congress will surely investigate the actions of the Secret Service. Politicians and pundits on both sides of the aisle have already called for a return to civility. Yet, there is another front that must be engaged to beat back the threat of political violence: We must stop handing extremists roadmaps for their violence.

Here’s what I mean. In an earlier era, Congress and state governments sought to battle political corruption by requiring campaigns to publish information about their financial supporters. As a result, an American who gives $200 to the Trump or Biden campaigns today will have their name, home address, and occupation or employer publicly disclosed in a permanent, online database. If they use a service like ActBlue or WinRed to make their donation, a gift of any size – even $1 – triggers the same exposure.

That’s not all. For over a decade, Democrats in Congress have pushed for legislation that would force many advocacy nonprofits – groups like the ACLU, Moms for Liberty, NRA, and Planned Parenthood – to publicly disclose their supporters as well. In the states, disgruntled former politicians have pushed ballot initiatives to make it harder for nonprofits to speak about elections and policy issues without revealing their members’ and supporters’ names and addresses.

For a long time, top-ranking Democrats defended these practices, arguing that “sunlight is the best disinfectant” for political corruption. But as we all know, too much sunlight without protection will burn us. During a time of rising political violence, our approach to disclosure must change.

Donor disclosure reinforces a worldview where people are defined first and foremost by their political beliefs and associations. That dehumanizing, toxic attitude is at the core of many of our current maladies. As former First Lady Melania Trump noted in a public statement, the shooter who took aim at the former president “recognized my husband as an inhuman political machine… the core facets of my husband’s life – his human side – were buried below the political machine.”

To stop the violence, we must stop the dehumanization. That may be hard to achieve with regard to our most famous (or infamous) political figures, but it should be common sense for the everyday Americans who vote for them, donate to them, and attend their rallies. A healthy society does not reduce its citizens, neighbors, sons, and daughters to partisan labels.

Fortunately, there is hope. The Supreme Court, citing hard-fought wisdom from the civil rights movement, has repeatedly recognized that the First Amendment protects our right to support social causes privately as well as publicly. In the states, a growing chorus of lawmakers from both parties are looking to expand commonsense privacy protections to cool an increasingly heated political atmosphere.

Since 2018, 20 states have already passed proactive laws, often with bipartisan support, shielding the names and addresses of citizens who support or join nonprofit groups. Regulators at the Federal Election Commission have also begun taking a hard look at what information citizens should and shouldn’t have to disclose in the modern era. Dara Lindenbaum, one of the Commission’s three Democrats, made waves recently by urging Congress to end the requirement that campaign donors’ street addresses be listed in public forms.

“Today, armed with only an individual’s name, it takes less than a half dozen clicks on the Commission’s website to find that person’s mailing address on a disclosure report. By contrast, until relatively recently, someone would have to physically come down to the Commission’s office and browse through paper filings for the same information,” Lindenbaum explained.

Donor disclosure serves up personally sensitive information to all kinds of bad actors: corrupt government officials, thin-skinned politicians, slanted media outlets, radical activists, oppressive foreign regimes, and even stalkers and scammers. There may have been a time when the risk was worthwhile, but times have changed.

There is no perfect cure for the problem of deranged individuals seeking to inflict violence on their perceived enemies. That means we must explore all possible avenues of addressing the problem piece by piece. As we review our security measures and urge calmer rhetoric, let’s also agree to protect Americans from extremists by allowing citizens to support causes they believe in while keeping their privacy – and safety – intact.