So what if Alex Pretti had a gun? |
A rosary adorns a framed photo of Alex Pretti that was left at a makeshift memorial in the area where he was shot and killed a day earlier by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. | Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images
Increasingly, the Trump administration’s defense of Alex Pretti’s killing has come to center on the fact that he had a gun.
“We respect that Second Amendment right, but those rights don’t count when you riot and assault, delay, obstruct and impede law enforcement officers,” Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol’s commander-at-large, told CNN over the weekend. “You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines, to any sort of protest that you want,” FBI Director Kash Patel said during a Fox News hit.
This is a weak defense on the merits; we have video evidence that federal agents disarmed Pretti before they killed him. But it’s also a flagrant contradiction of decades of conservative dogma, which insisted that American citizens have an unquestionable right to openly carry weapons, including at protests.
The Trump administration isn’t just dissembling about Pretti (who was, it should be noted, legally permitted to carry in Minnesota). They are trampling one of the core beliefs of the movement they claim to lead.
Gun rights groups have mostly been critical of this position. “Every peaceable Minnesotan has the right to keep and bear arms—including while attending protests, acting as observers, or exercising their First Amendment rights. These rights do not disappear when someone is lawfully armed, and they must be respected and protected at all times,” the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus said in a statement.
And it’s clear that the politics of it are terrible for the administration: Prominent Republicans in both Minnesota and Washington have criticized the shooting, and anonymous DHS officials are leaking to CNN and Fox News about how poorly Bovino and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have handled themselves. Even Trump himself is now taking a more conciliatory position on the Minneapolis deployment.
So what’s remarkable is the degree to which conservative movement stalwarts have been consistently willing to adopt the Bovino-Patel-Noem line.
Erick Erickson, a witness and prominent conservative commentator — who has said the NRA is too squishy on guns — essentially blaming Pretti’s death on his decision to carry. “I think you, when engaging in obstruction with federal agents, can get........