The usual MAGA “Yes, No, Maybe, and that’s definite.

As you know. the MAGAs are firmly in favor of the right to own and to carry a gun, even in public — except when a liberal does it.

Analysis of multiple videos of the incident by news organizations including the 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.

One is clearly seen removing Pretti’s gun from his waist, before another fires the first shot, and then Pretti is killed.

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.)

Here are the MAGAs’ unshakable opinions regarding guns, as expressed by Trump and his toadies.

The 2nd Amendment says you can carry a gun anywhere, except with ammunition, and not where there are ICE agents who don’t like you. I am pro-gun, except when I am anti-gun. And the Jan 6 rioters were innocent, but Pretti is guilty, and it’s all his fault that he was murdered. And guns are “bad stuff.”

“Peaceful protests while armed isn’t radical—it’s American.” Gun Owners of America. (Not according to Trump.}

“You can’t walk in with guns.” Donald J. Trump (Says the 2nd Amendment?)

“All law-abiding citizens have a right to keep and bear arms anywhere they have a legal right to be.” National Rifle Association.

“Riot, interfering with police action against that woman, pushing a cop, All crimes, all while armed. Pretti did this to himself.” By ar15.com, which bills itself as “the world’s largest firearm community.” (The so-called “crimes” never happened.)

“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.” An Ammoland article (Not being smart is justification for pumping 10 bullets into Pretti’s back.)

“It’s illegal to bring a gun to a protest.” FBI director Kash Patel wrongly told Fox News. (Patel invents a new law in opposition to gun owners’ belief in the 2nd Amendment.)

“If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.” Bill Essayli, a US attorney in California, wrote on X. (“Legally justified” for carrying a gun? Is that what the 2nd Amendment says?)

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.” Donald J. Trump. (Apparently, Trump, the fake gun enthusiast, believes a gun and fully loaded clips are “bad stuff.”)

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.” An ar15.com user. (Like the riot on Jan 6, after which Trump pardoned everyone, including the Proud Boys.)

Jason Ouimet, chairman of the NRA’s political victory fund, endorsed Trump by describing him as “history’s most forthright, pro-Second Amendment president.” (Except when a gun owner is murdered by Trump’s Gestapo.)

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.”

(“Lawful”? Except that Pretti was bending over to help a woman who had been knocked down, when he was shot in the back.)

Herrera repeatedly takes both opposing sides of the issue. Did he learn that from Trump?)

“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.”

(“Messed up” is a killer’s way of saying, “Murdered in cold blood.”)

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?”

(Yes, if you go to a riot with a gun and magazines, you should plan to use them.)

“To the ‘don’t bring a gun to a protest’ crowd, fuck you,” one member of a private Boogaloo group wrote on Facebook this week. “To the fucking turncoats thinking disarming is the answer, and don’t 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.”

And now you know the unshakable opinion(s) of Donald J. Trump and the gun community: You cannot(can) bring a gun to a protest, and if you do, it’s legal (illegal) for police (or whatever ICE is) to shoot you ten times in the back.

And not one word of condemnation for the ICE goon who shot Pretti ten times in the back. He will be exonerated because it was all Pretti’s fault.

That’s what FBI head Kash Patel and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tell me.

Meanwhile, the killer still is hiding behind his mask.

Simple.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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Judge orders release of 5-year-old Liam Ramos and his dad from ICE detention

Don’t move, terrorist. Don’t make us shoot you.

“People should carry guns. “Oh, wait . . .” Republican nuttiness

If you still believe what Trump and the Republicans tell you, here is what you believe:

1. It was all Alex Pretti’s own fault for carrying a gun
2. “The president supports the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens, absolutely,”
3. “When you are bearing arms and confronted by law enforcement, you are raising … the risk of force being used against you.”
4. Pretti was “brandishing a weapon,” “acted violently,” and ““wanted to … massacre law enforcement.”
5. Peaceful protesters don’t “show up with a gun.”
6. Pretti was “an assassin.”
7. “Protesters can’t have guns.
8. “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.” That analysis, the NRA said, is “dangerous and wrong.”
9. “No one can “bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”
10. “Showing up at a protest is very American. Showing up with a weapon is very American,”

Florida Sun-Sentinel WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2026
Minnesota shooting twists gun debate
Some backers of GOP reject blaming victim for carrying firearm
By Bill Barrow and Nicholas Riccardi

Prominent Republicans and gun rights advocates helped elicit a White House turnabout this week after bristling over the administration’s characterization of Alex Pretti, the second person killed this month by federal officers in Minneapolis, as responsible for his own death because he lawfully possessed a weapon.

The concern is acute enough that Trump’s top spokeswoman sought Monday to reassert his brand as a staunch gun rights supporter.

“The president supports the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens, absolutely,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

Leavitt qualified that “when you are bearing arms and confronted by law enforcement, you
are raising … the risk of force being used against you.”

Within hours of Pretti’s death Saturday, Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino suggested Pretti “wanted to … massacre law enforcement,” and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Pretti was “brandishing” a weapon and acted “violently” toward officers.

“I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign,” Noem said.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump’s mass deportation effort, went further on X, declaring Pretti “an assassin.”

Bystander videos contradicted each claim, instead showing Pretti holding a cellphone and helping a woman who had been shoved to the ground and pepper-sprayed by a federal officer.

Within seconds, Pretti was sprayed, too, and taken to the ground by multiple officers. No video disclosed thus far has shown him unholstering his concealed weapon, which he had a permit to carry in Minnesota. It appeared that one officer took Pretti’s gun and walked away with it just before shots began.

As multiple videos went viral online and on television, Vice President JD Vance reposted Miller’s assessment, while Trump shared an alleged photo of “the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!).”

On Tuesday, Trump was asked if he agreed with Miller’s comment describing Pretti as an “assassin” and answered “no.” But he added that protesters “can’t have guns” and said he wants the death investigated.

“You can’t walk in with guns, you just can’t,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn before departing for a trip to Iowa, adding that Pretti’s death was “a very unfortunate incident.”

The National Rifle Association, which has backed Trump three times, released a statement that began by casting blame on Minnesota Democrats it accused of stoking protests. But the group lashed out after a federal prosecutor in California said on X that, “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.” That analysis, the NRA said, is “dangerous and wrong.”

FBI Director Kash Patel magnified the blowback Sunday on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Martiromo.” No one, Patel said, can “bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”

Erich Pratt, vice president of Gun Owners of America, was incredulous. “I have attended protest rallies while armed, and no one got injured,” he said on CNN. Conservative officials around the country made the same connection between the First and Second amendments.

“Showing up at a protest is very American. Showing up with a weapon is very American, state Rep. Jeremy Faison, who leads the GOP caucus in Tennessee, said on X.

Multiple Trump supporters were found to have weapons during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump issued blanket pardons to all of them.

And then there’s Kyle Rittenhouse, a counterprotester acquitted after fatally shooting two men and injuring another in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during the George Floyd protests in 2020. Rittenhouse has emerged as a hero to many on the conservative right.

In short, if you are a MAGA, you believe people should legally be able to carry guns, but not loaded, and not to a protest, especially if the gun has been taken away from you, and you are lying face-down on the ground being beaten, while a masked Trump goon pumps ten shots into your back.

I know, because Trump, Patel, Faison, Pratt, Miller, Noem, Vance, Leavitt, Bovino, the NRA, and a few other right-wing crazies told me in many, many, many different ways.

But if you break the law and attempt to overthrow the government, Trump will pardon you.