To be clear, I don't think anybody's wrong to consider such laws a violation of their freedom. I don't, but it's a personal judgement, not something where there

To be clear, I don't think anybody's wrong to consider such laws a violation of their freedom. I don't, but it's a personal judgement, not something where there's an obvious, objective right/wrong. I think by rejecting the word "violated" you've materially changed the question, from a one about politics to one about semantics. There are many possible definitions of freedom and high among them is "the ability to do whatever you want". In this sense such laws obviously reduce freedom - as you state, it's a simple matter of definition. But that's an uninteresting matter of word definitions. The question about "violating" your freedom is about your judgement as to whether it is a good or a bad thing for the law to restrict you in this way. You haven't said anything about that.