Alex Pretti’s Gun Rights
Many Trump administration claims conflict with reality.
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Stephen Gutowski is an award-winning journalist and certified firearms instructor who focuses on gun policy and politics. He runs TheReload.com, and his work has been featured everywhere from the cover of Time Magazine to CNN to the Wall Street Journal.
“You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”
That was the claim FBI Director Kash Patel made immediately after immigration agents shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was one of several claims from Trump administration officials, including the president himself, about the legality and abnormality of how Pretti carried his gun. But many of those claims conflict with reality.
First, and most easily addressed, is the claim that Pretti was carrying illegally.
There is no federal regulation on carrying guns anywhere outside of federal property. The federal government has little say over state or local gun-carry policies. The FBI director has no power to declare gun carry at a protest in Minnesota unlawful—if the incident preceding Pretti’s death even qualifies as a protest at all, given how few people were gathered on the street.
In the case of Minnesota, anyone licensed to carry a gun is also allowed to carry at a protest, either openly or concealed. Minneapolis doesn’t have any city ordinances against the practice either, likely because Minnesota preempts local municipalities from passing their own gun prohibitions.
Minneapolis Police have confirmed that Alex Pretti had a valid Minnesota concealed carry license. So it was not unlawful for him to carry during the confrontation that ultimately ended in immigration agents shooting him to death.
Furthermore, despite initial claims from officials like Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, video shows Pretti never reached for, touched, or brandished his firearm during the altercation with Border Patrol officers. The only person who drew Pretti’s gun was the immigration agent who disarmed him—and that agent did so before any shots were fired.
DHS has also claimed that Pretti did not have ID on his person. It would be a finable offense under Minnesota law not to produce your permit when asked by a peace officer, but the punishment is a $25 ticket that’s refundable if the ticketed person can later show proof of a permit. It’s also not a law that’s enforceable by federal immigration agents, and video strongly indicates that an ID or permit issue was not the catalyst for the initial interaction between Pretti and the agents, who aren’t aware of Pretti’s gun until after he was lying on all fours on the ground.
Then there are the claims that Pretti’s carry setup was abnormal and even indicative of nefarious intent.
“I don’t like the fact that he was carrying a gun that was fully loaded, and he had two magazines with him,” President Trump said of Pretti in an interview with Fox News. “That’s pretty unusual.”
It’s not unusual at all for people who carry a gun on a regular basis to have that gun loaded and to carry spare magazines.
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The Trump administration has been unclear on exactly how many magazines Pretti had on him. President Trump and other officials initially claimed he had two extra magazines. However, Trump’s latest comments suggest Pretti only had two magazines total. The picture of his gun that the administration released only shows one magazine lying next to an unloaded gun, and they have not answered questions on exactly how many extra magazines he had or produced pictures of them.
Carrying a single extra magazine is the most common setup among gun carriers, but carrying two or more is far from unheard of. Equipping an extra magazine is so common that pretty much every gun holster maker sells magazine holsters, often ones that are directly integrated into the gun holster itself.
That’s why every major gun rights group spoke out against the administration’s attacks on gun carry. Groups from Gun Owners of America to the Second Amendment Foundation to the National Association for Gun Rights to the National Rifle Association all condemned officials who sought to justify Pretti’s shooting by pointing to him carrying a gun or extra magazines.
“The claim that some are now making—that the peaceable carry of a firearm near officers is enough to justify them using lethal force—is an affront to the Second Amendment rights of all Americans,” Kostas Moros, the Second Amendment Foundation’s Director of Legal Research and Education, told my publication, The Reload, on Sunday. “People should not fear interacting with police officers just because they are lawfully carrying.”
The backlash led to a few walkbacks from Trump officials. The first came from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who sought to reassure people on Monday that President Trump fully supports the Second Amendment and shifted the complaint about Pretti toward allegations that he interfered with law enforcement. FBI Director Patel took a similar tack later that day.
“You wanna go out there and use your Second Amendment right to bear arms? Okay. No problem,” Patel said on Monday in an interview with conspiracy theorist Benny Johnson.
Yet President Trump resisted the walkback in favor of doubling down. Trump himself used to have a concealed carry permit before losing it when he was convicted of multiple felonies in 2024. Nevertheless, he continued to deride the common practice of carrying a loaded gun with backup magazines.
“I don’t like that he had a gun. I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines,” he told reporters at a restaurant in Iowa on Tuesday. “That’s a lot of bad stuff.”
The idea that carrying a loaded gun with an extra magazine is “bad stuff” will come as a shock to many—especially gun owners.
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Just remember Kyle Rittenhaus and how he got a free pass from the judge to carry out extra judicial murder and is now a poster child of MAGA. I wasn’t aware that their second amendment is used to silence my first amendment rights.
The legality or illegality of Pretti’s possession of a hand gun — and clearly it was legal, in the eyes of this former Asst DA in Manhattan — is irrelevant to the matter at hand, i.e., whether the shooting of Mr. Pretti was justified — and clearly it was not, again in the eyes of this former Asst DA in Manhattan. If I were trying the case against the shooters — and mind you, I would indict every ICE/BP agent involved in a conspiracy to kill Pretti — I would ask the judge to exclude evidence of the handgun Pretti carried, since nobody has or could claim that the handgun was relevant to the shooting. I admit I would likely lose that argument, but I would attempt to make it. In short, the 2A rights Mr. Pretti was exercising are NOT relevant to his murder and the expected charges against the shooter et al.