In the hours after Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, President Donald Trump and his administration appeared to directly undermine the rights granted to gun owners in the Second Amendment.
Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem inaccurately said Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” who was “brandishing” his legally held gun. (Video footage has since shown that Pretti did not draw his gun at any point during his fatal interaction with federal agents.) FBI director Kash Patel wrongly told Fox News it’s illegal to bring a gun to a protest. Bill Essayli, a US attorney in California, wrote on X: “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.”
On Tuesday, Trump doubled down, saying Pretti “certainly shouldn’t have been carrying a gun.” “I don’t like that he had a gun. I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines. That’s a lot of bad stuff,” he continued.
The comments led to backlash from gun rights’ groups, with the Minnesota’s Gun Owners Caucus writing on X Sunday: “There is no prohibition on a permit holder carrying a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines at a protest or rally in Minnesota.” Gun Owners of America also posted on X stating “peaceful protests while armed isn’t radical—it’s American,” alongside a clip of Trump telling reporters at the White House “you can’t walk in with guns.” The National Rifle Association avoided specifically mentioning Trump but stated “all law-abiding citizens have a right to keep and bear arms anywhere they have a legal right to be.”
But a WIRED review of gun enthusiast forums and Facebook groups for private militias and extremists reveals that the vast majority of Second Amendment supporters in these online meeting spaces are willing to look past the president’s remarks, and lay the blame on Pretti himself.
Analysis of multiple videos of the incident by news organizations including the New York Times and Bellingcat, shows that Pretti, while holding a smartphone, attempted to help a woman who was being pepper-sprayed by a federal agent. At that point at least half a dozen fellow agents jumped on Pretti, shoving him to the ground. One is clearly seen removing Pretti’s gun from his waist, before another fires the first shot and then Pretti is killed.
The narrative gun enthusiasts are spinning online, however, tells a different story.
“Riot, interfering with police action against that woman, pushing a cop,” a user with the screen name gotigers wrote on the pro-gun forum ar15.com, which bills itself as “the world’s largest firearm community.” “All crimes, all while armed. Pretti did this to himself.”
In response to an Ammoland article about Patel’s statement, a commenter with the screenname Yaza wrote: “LEGAL, yes. SMART, NO. Anybody carrying should be smart enough to know that where and when you carry makes a difference. In front of a bunch of ICE agents who are carrying bigger weapons that I have? Not the smartest thing to do.”
Some firearms advocates also excused the president’s comment in Iowa, claiming the clip failed to show the necessary context.
Trump “is not elliquant [sic] at all and he needs to think before talking many times, but he was talking about at riots, not in general,” one ar15.com user wrote.
A member with the screen name DK-Prof posted that Trump “has never cared about guns or the 2nd amendment.”
“I knew all of that when I voted for him, and I don’t regret my vote in the slightest,” they continued. With the exception of last year, Trump has shown up to every NRA Annual Meeting since 2015, according to firearms outlet The Reload. In 2020, Jason Ouimet, chairman of the NRA’s political victory fund, endorsed Trump by describing him as “history’s most forthright, pro-Second Amendment president.”
Brandon Herrera, a prominent gun influencer with over 4 million followers on YouTube, said in a video posted this week that while it was unfortunate that Pretti died, ultimately the fault was his own.
“Pretti didn’t deserve to die, but it also wasn’t just a baseless execution,” Herrera said, adding without evidence that Pretti’s purpose was to disrupt ICE operations. “If you’re interfering with arrests and things like that, that’s a crime. If you get in the fucking officer’s way, that will probably be escalated to physical force, whether it’s arresting you or just getting you the fuck out of the way, which then can lead to a tussle, which, if you’re armed, can lead to a fatal shooting.” He described the situation as “lawful but awful.”
Herrera was joined in the video by former police officer and fellow gun influencer Cody Garrett, known online as Donut Operator.
Both men took the opportunity to deride immigrants, with Herrera saying “every news outlet is going to jump onto this because it’s current thing and they’re going to ignore the 12 drunk drivers who killed you know, American citizens yesterday that were all illegals or H-1Bs or whatever.”
Herrera also referenced his “friend” Kyle Rittenhouse, who has become central to much of the debate about the shooting.
On August 25, 2020, Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, traveled from his home in Illinois to a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, brandishing an AR-15-style rifle, claiming he was there to protect local businesses. He killed two people and shot another in the arm that night.
Critics of ICE’s actions in Minneapolis quickly highlighted what they saw as the hypocrisy of the right’s defense of Rittenhouse and attacks on Pretti.
“Kyle Rittenhouse was a conservative hero for walking into a protest actually brandishing a weapon, but this guy who had a legal permit to carry and already had had his gun removed is to some people an instigator, when he was actually going to help a woman,” Jessica Tarlov, a Democratic strategist, said on Fox News this week.
Rittenhouse also waded into the debate, writing on X: “The correct way to approach law enforcement when armed,” above a picture of himself with his hands up in front of police after he killed two people. He added in another post that “ICE messed up.”
The claim that Pretti was to blame was repeated in private Facebook groups run by armed militias, according to data shared with WIRED by the Tech Transparency Project, as well as on extremist Telegram channels.
“I’m sorry for him and his family,” one member of a Facebook group called American Patriots wrote. “My question though, why did he go to these riots armed with a gun and extra magazines if he wasn’t planning on using them?”
Some extremist groups, such as the far-right Boogaloo movement, have been highly critical of the administration’s comments on being armed at a protest.
“To the ‘dont bring a gun to a protest’ crowd, fuck you,” one member of a private Boogaloo group wrote on Facebook this week. “To the fucking turn coats thinking disarming is the answer and dont think it would happen to you as well, fuck you. To the federal government who I’ve watched murder citizens just for saying no to them, fuck you. Shall not be infringed.”
Leftist firearms groups and content creators have also pointed out the hypocrisy of their right-wing counterparts.
“I erroneously thought that the 2A rights community might finally truly stand up and pay attention, but a significant portion of this group has abandoned ‘shall not be infringed’ and instead turned to excuses and disinformation,” says Karl Kasarda, a YouTuber who runs the channel InRangeTV and hosts inclusive firearms matches.
“Even the slightest amount of ideological consistency of the 2A rights community would require a call for justice yet we’re seeing disturbing claims that any interference with law enforcement, or for that matter, any potential criminal act, justifies being killed by agents of the state without even legitimate investigation.”
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