Last week, as rumors swirled about an impending ICE surge that would target the Somali population in Maine, where I live, I called my barbershop to schedule a last-minute appointment. I didn’t want a haircut, but I worried that I needed one. I am a light-skinned black American: my hair and beard are thick and curly. On Thursday, I had both cut extra short in an effort to look less like someone ICE might find interesting. That is to say, for the first time in my life, I tried to look a little whiter.
I had seen video after video of federal agents occupying Minneapolis, flagrantly racially profiling innocent people on the street—demanding that American citizens, including police officers and Native Americans, show their papers, and even detaining some—and it seemed that the same chaos was coming to southern Maine.
I also made another change in advance of ICE’s arrival: I stopped carrying the 9mm compact handgun—a Glock 19 equipped with a Holosun red dot—that I keep underneath my shirt most days, in full compliance with Maine’s concealed carry laws. Although it is completely within my rights to carry concealed in my state (a practice I began a little over a year ago, after having gotten several death threats for my political writing), the last few weeks have made it apparent that ICE and Border Patrol don’t put much store in the law or Constitution.
When I heard news that Maine was about to get the Minneapolis treatment, a fear gnawed at me: What happens if I’m harassed or grabbed by an ICE agent for walking down the street without my passport, and an agent feels the pistol beneath my sweatshirt? What happens, God forbid, if my Glock dislodged from my appendix holster while I was being roughly detained? I worried that, in such an event, ICE officers—poorly trained, trigger happy—might panic and shoot me out of fear, even if I was doing nothing illegal or threatening. I worried, too, that they might not have even bothered to learn Maine’s gun laws before descending on my state.
Today, Border Patrol’s killing of Alex Jeffrey Pretti—a 37-year old ICU nurse who the Minneapolis Police Department believe possessed a legal carry permit, and was armed in the lead-up to his death—made it clear that my paranoia was justified. It also made it clear that it is not only minorities who are having their First, Fourth, and now Second Amendment rights trampled by the federal government: Pretti, like Renee Good before him, was white. And while new facts could certainly emerge that complicate what we know so far, existing videos of the incident seem to show that he never reached for his weapon in his fatal encounter with the feds. It appears to have been removed by agents before they shot him dead, after first pepper spraying him in the face as he tried to help a woman who had been knocked to the ground. Apparently, the federal bootheel is now colorblind, one of the administration’s more notable anti-DEI achievements.
Though the Trump administration claims that its immigration enforcement operations are meant to protect Americans from an “invasion” of foreign-born gang members, federal officials have now killed two American citizens—specifically, white American citizens, the kind Trump and Stephen Miller tacitly signal they care the most about—in less than a month. It is plain that Operation Metro Surge and Operation Catch of the Day—yes, that’s what ICE actually calls its Maine operation—are not about protecting the good citizens of Minnesota and Maine. And they are certainly not about protecting our rights, guaranteed by the Constitution.
I’ve spent nearly my entire life in American gun culture: My father was a combat veteran turned state police officer; I come from a hunting family; my first job was at a gun club; I regularly invest hours at the range, and burn through a thousand or more rounds of pistol and rifle ammo every month. I admit that by the standards of some readers, I no doubt qualify as a “gun nut.” And I have had innumerable arguments with liberal friends about the Second Amendment. My views are unfashionable in some of the circles in which I travel. I believe, and have always believed, that despite the National Rifle Association’s faults, the organization is correct about the core purpose of the Second Amendment: to prevent government tyranny. And because tyrannical governments can be either liberal or conservative, the constitution protects those on the left and right equally.
Some time before he was shot dead in Utah, Charlie Kirk said, now infamously, that it was worth accepting “some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.” Many of his critics dredged up that quote in the wake of his assassination, noting the irony and suggesting that his manner of death disproved his argument. I agreed with Kirk about very little, but about this he was right: the blight of gun violence is a uniquely American tragedy. But the Second Amendment is a uniquely American freedom, and in fact is the very thing that makes possible all the others.
Some pro-gun organizations are already taking a stand: “Every peaceable Minnesotan has the right to keep and bear arms–including while attending protests, acting as observers, or exercising their First Amendment rights,” Minnesota’s Gun Owners Caucus wrote in response to today’s killing. “These rights do not disappear when someone is lawfully armed, and they must be respected and protected at all times.” Gun Owners of America, meanwhile, observed that “The Second Amendment protects American’s right to bear arms while protesting—a right the federal government must not infringe upon.” Despite touting itself as a staunch defender of American gun rights, however, the Trump administration appears to be taking a rather different tone. “Thank God for the patriots of @ICE.gov,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth tweeted, showing no concern that a federal agent emptied his magazine into the back of an apparently law-abiding gun-owning American who seems to have been safely disarmed. “You are SAVING the country.”
Whether your lean right or left, are pro-immigration or have more restrictionist views, my fellow gun owners should understand the message that is being sent by this administration: if you exercise your constitutionally protected right to bear arms, masked federal agents can murder you in cold blood, simply because an American citizen exercising their Second Amendment rights scares them. This isn’t about politics, it is about the rights that make our politics possible in the first place.
It is not yet clear what exactly Pretti’s own views were, or what motivated him to be on that Minneapolis street. But he knew what the Second Amendment is for: to affirm that Americans are a free people, and free people will not be cowed by masked federal agents. As this country’s gun enthusiasts have long known, freedom means little if you lack the means to keep it. Without the Second Amendment, the constitution is a bit of parchment. With the Second Amendment, the constitution is a demand. These rights shall not be infringed.
The post No Freedom Without the Second Amendment appeared first on The Atlantic.
