The Trump administration is in over its waders this time. Unlike Renee Good, who was shot and killed by an ICE agent in a likely justified shoot after she hit the agent with her vehicle earlier this month, the killing of 37-year-old Veterans Affairs hospital nurse Alex Pretti by one or perhaps multiple border patrol agents appears to have been, at the very least, an egregious mistake. Video evidence suggests that Pretti, who was legally carrying a pistol, was disarmed prior to the shooting and presented no physical threat to law enforcement despite the fact that he was resisting arrest. Instead of waiting for the findings of an internal investigation, members of the administration decided to launch a full-court press demonizing both the deceased and the fact that Pretti was carrying a weapon. What resulted was a series of the most deranged and un-American statements on gun rights made by Republicans in recent memory, maybe ever.
FBI Director Kash Patel, the man in charge of enforcing federal law, seemingly has no respect for the Second Amendment. “You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple. You don’t have the right to break the law and incite violence,” Patel told Fox News. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called Pretti a “domestic terrorist” and DHS posted on X: “The suspect also had two magazines and no ID — this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
“If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli posted on X. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent bizarrely waded into the gun rights conversation: “He brought a gun. Have you ever gone to a protest, Jon? Have you? I have. Guess what. I didn’t bring a gun, I brought a billboard,” Bessent said to ABC’s Jon Karl. Even President Donald Trump claimed that Pretti was carrying a “very dangerous gun, a dangerous and unpredictable gun.” (Whatever that means.)
The White House is clearly feeling the heat following the two tragedies that unfolded in Minneapolis, but the decision to focus on Pretti’s legal firearm is disturbing, regardless of what you think about ICE and the enforcement of immigration law. The aforementioned statements by Trump officials are indistinguishable from leftist anti-gun rhetoric that you would expect from Everytown, Giffords, or your local authoritarian Democratic politician, right down to the focus on Pretti’s “multiple magazines,” as if a certain number of bullets is indicative of anything.
Several gun rights groups, including the NRA, Gun Owners of America, Second Amendment Foundation, and Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, have called for an investigation into Pretti’s death and condemned the administration’s reckless anti-gun rhetoric. “You don’t lose the Second Amendment when you exercise the First,” said GOA Senior Vice President Erich Pratt.
Gun rights are one of the few issues where the Right has been gaining ground in dramatic fashion both at the federal and state levels. The Supreme Court dealt gun grabbers a massive defeat in New York Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen and 29 states, consisting of over half of the population, now allow permitless carry of handguns. Prior to 2003, only Vermont allowed citizens to carry without a permission slip from the state. A Republican regime going soft on self-defense risks undoing the important work done by the gun rights community in recent decades.
Predictably, some Republicans seem willing to betray their principles in order to excuse the behavior of the Trump administration. But breaking bad on gun rights could lead to even more catastrophic ends than large swaths of the Right recently abandoning free market economics and the anti-abortion movement in service to the 47th president.
The Second Amendment is the reason why the public still enjoys freedom of speech and freedom of association. Our vast arsenal of privately owned weapons separates us from the Europeans who now live under varying degrees of dystopian authoritarianism. Mass protests against the Islamic regime erupted this month across Iran, and somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000, or perhaps more Iranians were slaughtered in the streets in cold blood by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Sure, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is a uniquely evil man, but we have had our share of depraved leaders in our history as well. The reason why examples of state-sponsored barbarism such as Waco and Ruby Ridge are statistical anomalies in the modern United States is not due to the kindness in the hearts of our leaders, it is because 100 million people armed with 450 million guns and several trillion rounds of ammunition would make quick work of any force that any government could muster, up to and including the greatest military the world has ever seen. Ask an Iranian if the anti-regime protests would have looked different if citizens owned tens of millions of AR-15s.“The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a musician, political strategist, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast.