President Donald Trump expressed his dislike that Alex Pretti, the anti-ICE protester killed in Minneapolis on Saturday, was carrying a gun when he was shot dead by Border Patrol agents.
“He shouldn’t have been carrying a gun,” Trump told reporters in Urbandale, Iowa.
“I don’t like that he had a gun. I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines,” Trump added. “That’s a lot of bad stuff, and despite that, I say that’s a very unfortunate incident.”
As he departed the White House on Tuesday, Trump reiterated a similar sentiment: “You can’t walk in with guns. You can’t do that. But it’s a very unfortunate incident.”
Shortly after Pretti was shot during a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation, the Department of Homeland Security shared a photo on social media of Pretti’s firearm, a 9-millimeter semi-automatic handgun, contending “officers attempted to disarm the suspect, but the armed suspect violently resisted.”
“The suspect also had 2 magazines and no ID — this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement,” DHS wrote on social media.
Video recordings of the interaction appear to capture a Border Patrol agent taking Pretti’s weapon from him before one of his colleagues opened fire.
Pretti was a legal gun owner with a permit to carry. Trump administration officials have zeroed in on that fact, with FBI Director Kash Patel even suggesting over the weekend the presence of a gun at a rally could be evidence of malicious intent.
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Second Amendment advocates, including the National Rifle Association, have criticized the focus on Pretti being armed at a protest and the fact that he was carrying two magazines with him at the time of the incident.
“Carrying an extra magazine implies nothing,” the NRA wrote on X. “Holsters designed to carry spare magazines are common and widely sold. Training resources and guides across the internet actively recommend it. Thousands of law-abiding Americans do this every day. This is standard, not overkill.”