After a weekend that saw a number of Trump administration officials arguing that carrying guns to protests is illegal or suggesting that carrying two magazines is a sign of nefarious intent, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt on Monday reiterated President Donald Trump’s support for the Second Amendment during her daily briefing.
.@PressSec: “@POTUS supports the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens—absolutely… while Americans have a constitutional right to bear Arms, Americans do not have a constitutional right to impede lawful immigration enforcement operations.” pic.twitter.com/RUTna6A0e5
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) January 26, 2026
“The President supports the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens, absolutely. There has been no greater supporter or defender of the right to bear arms than President Donald J. Trump. So while Americans have a constitutional right to bear Arms, Americans do not have a constitutional right to impede lawful immigration enforcement operations. And any gun owner knows that when you are carrying a weapon, when you are bearing arms, and you are confronted by law enforcement, you are raising the assumption of risk and the risk of force being used against you and that’s unfortunately what took place on Saturday.”
Now, I’m going to quibble just a bit with Leavitt’s assertion that simply carrying a firearm raises a risk of force being used against you when “confronted” by law enforcement. Carrying a gun, by itself, is not indicative of any criminal intent, and lawfully exercising a fundamental civil right shouldn’t increase the risk of force by police; whether it’s carrying a sign at a protest or carrying a Sig at a park.
What about if you’re actively impeding or obstructing law enforcement, though? Even then, generally speaking, the mere presence of a firearm doesn’t indicate a threat of violence. If someone is part of a human chain that’s sitting on a sidewalk and trying to block an entrance to a building, for instance, an officer who spots that individual’s holstered pistol in their waistband does not have cause to use lethal force.
The Customs and Border Patrol’s use of force manual is 63 pages long, but boiled down to a single sentence looks something like this:
A use of deadly force is “necessary” when the officer/agent has a reasonable belief based on the totality of the circumstances that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury to the officer/agent or to another person.
Was that the case in the death of Alex Pretti? Honestly, I don’t know. We did learn today that there’s at least some body camera footage that’s being reviewed, and I hope that it’ss released to the public in the near future. Based on the videos that I’ve seen, Pretti is on the ground when an agent removes the gun he was carrying and starts to walk away. Shouts of “gun, gun” can be heard, and just a moment later we hear the sound of a gunshot. A couple of moments after that at least one agent fires at Pretti as other agents back up, and several more shots are fired at Pretti as he lies prone and unmoving on the pavement.
In my non-lawyerly opinion those last few shots are going to be difficult to justify. The initial shots are more understandable given the chaos of the moment, the shouts that a gun had been spotted, the silence of the agent who took the gun, and the shot that was fired immediately afterwards, which may have come from Pretti’s gun while it was in the agent’s possession. Was the agent who shot Pretti unaware that he didn’t have a gun in his hand, or did he assume that the shot came from Pretti?
And what exactly are the totality of these circumstances? Does it include the initial interaction between Pretti and the Border Patrol officer, or are we talking into account only the few seconds leading up to the discharge of the agent’s sidearm? CBP’s use of force policy also states that agents are supposed to use de-escalation tactics and techniques “when safe and feasible”, and in the videos I’ve seen the agent did not attempt to de-escalate the situation at all.
I’m still leaning towards Pretti’s shooting being “lawful but awful,” but I’m keeping an open mind as more information becomes available. I do hope the investigation into the shooting is as open and transparent as possible, and I’m glad that the White House is apparently backing off the argument raised by FBI Director Kash Patel, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and even President Trump himself that Pretti’s decision to carry two magazines with his Sig P320 is evidence, in itself, that he was planning on committing a violent assault against law enforcement or others.
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