ALEX PRETTI, LAW ENFORCEMENT, AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT. Among other things, the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis has spurred a bizarre debate about the Second Amendment. Pretti, who got into a physical altercation with Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, owned a Sig Sauer AXG Combat semi-automatic 9 mm pistol. An article in the Minnesota Star Tribune described Pretti’s gun as “widely popular and frequently carried by U.S. military and law enforcement.” Pretti carried the gun in a holster on his belt.
Judging by bystander videos, it appears an agent discovered Pretti’s gun during the scuffle, and that agent and possibly other agents informed the others about the presence of a firearm, whereupon another agent drew his own gun and shot Pretti. In all, that agent and one other shot Pretti a reported 10 times.
Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara has said Pretti had a permit to carry the gun. Nevertheless, some, including some members of the Trump administration, have criticized Pretti for bringing the weapon to a protest in which confrontations with police might be expected. After all, there are reports that a week before his death, Pretti was in another scuffle with federal agents in which he suffered a broken rib. He might have anticipated he would get into it again if he went back out on the street.
That is the core of a debate in which Pretti advocates, who are usually the kind of people who support gun control, have stressed Pretti’s Second Amendment right to carry the gun, while critics of Pretti, who are usually the kind of people who support the Second Amendment, have stressed that he should not have carried the gun that day. It’s just one of the many upside-down arguments of the Trump years.
President Donald Trump turbocharged the argument when he said of Pretti, “You can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns.” It was not clear if the president was speaking specifically about the law or whether he was just addressing the question of whether having a gun in Pretti’s situation was appropriate.
But how about this as a way to view the situation: 1) If reports are correct, Pretti did indeed have a legal right to carry a gun when he inserted himself into that scuffle on the streets of Minneapolis, and 2) While legal, given what Pretti was doing, carrying the gun was a terrible idea.
There is still much to learn from the videos of the incident, both bystander and bodycam footage. But now it seems clear that the discovery of the gun significantly raised the alarm level among the federal agents struggling with Pretti. That should not shock anyone. Gun owners with concealed carry permits, such as Pretti, are required to receive training on how to handle their weapons. One of the issues covered in that training is what to do if the gun owner is carrying and finds himself in an encounter with police. The basic rule seems to be that the gun owner should immediately tell the officers about the gun, keep their hands visible, not make any sudden moves, and follow instructions.
DAILY MEMO: USING THE MINNEAPOLIS VIOLENCE TO PUSH IMMIGRATION REFORM
Things can get very complicated — and very dangerous — very fast when concealed gun owners don’t follow the basic instructions in encounters with police.
The bottom line is that we have lots of rights that are very important to us, but should nonetheless be exercised with discretion. The First Amendment protects our right to say all sorts of things, but that doesn’t mean it is always a good idea to do so. Pretti had the right to carry a gun. But given what he was doing on the day he was shot, carrying a weapon was a very, very bad idea.
