January 29, 2026 08:05 AM UTC

Trump Alienates Second Amendment Crowd Over Minnesota Killing

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Trump administration grapples with the compounding fallout from the killing last weekend of VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti by immigration agents in Minneapolis, one of the biggest problems in their knee-jerk vilification of Pretti, who was legally carrying a firearm when he was attacked by federal agents, was the instant presumption that Pretti intended to use his firearm against federal officers–a contention that was immediately debunked by video showing that Pretti never drew the weapon, and was disarmed by agents before being shot.

As Denver7’s Shannon Ogden reports, the administration’s sweeping statements about the presence of Pretti’s legal gun serving as the justification for his killing have outraged the gun-rights community, with a similar effect to telling victims of sex trafficking that the Epstein files are a “hoax.”

President Trump himself on Tuesday said protesters “can’t have guns.” And later in the day, “I don’t like that he had a gun,” Trump said. “I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines. That’s a lot of bad stuff.”

Tuesday afternoon, Denver7 anchor Shannon Ogden asked Dudley Brown, founder and president of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, whether a person could carry a gun while peacefully protesting.

“I will defend his right to carry and the rights of citizens to carry even at a protest. In fact, I think that is a place you should carry,” said Brown…

We obviously wouldn’t go so far as to encourage bringing guns to a protest, and there is plenty of debate today on whether doing so was a wise choice on Alex Pretti’s part. But the debate here is not about what is wise, but rather what is legal, and to single-issue gun rights advocates like Dudley Brown of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, the administration’s blaming of Pretti for his death solely on the basis of possessing a gun is a grievous violation of the Second Amendment.

This isn’t the first time that the Trump administration has run afoul of supposedly sacrosanct conservative principles, like when Attorney General Pam Bondi made bizarre threats to prosecute “hate speech” in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination that appeared to go beyond any actual law–laws that conservatives revile almost as much as restrictions on guns.

Just as it was in the case of Renee Good a few weeks ago, the Trump administration’s reflexive instinct to deny any wrongdoing and redirect blame onto victims before any investigation into events takes place has turned calamitous, and in the process exposed a lack of both scruples and fundamental conservative values.

If those values were ever more than tokens, Trump has now desecrated them.