By Jonathan Lowy, President, Global Action on Gun Violence
The killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal officials in Minneapolis are disturbing and enraging, as is the effort to defame and blame the victims, and to propagate false accounts of their deaths. ICE’s tactics, and the Trump Administration’s defense of them, place many of our fundamental Constitutional rights at stake – including those protected by the First, Second and Fourth Amendments.
However, these tragedies provide an opportunity for unity. The fact that Pretti was carrying a gun – legally – when ICE agents assaulted him has scrambled the usual fault lines on gun issues, with supposed “gun rights” champions blaming his gun carrying and opponents of public gun carrying defending him. The incident provides an opportunity for Americans to rethink old divisions and unite around our most fundamental rights, including the most fundamental — the right to live.
It seems obvious, but it bears stating that Alex Pretti, like Renee Good before him, had a right to live. A right not to be shot while exercising their legal and constitutional rights to protest, assemble, witness and film public government operations — and carry a registered legal firearm.
As a longtime gun violence prevention attorney, I have argued that the right to live is protected by the Constitution, and it restrains the exercise of all other Constitutional rights when they imperil public safety. While the Supreme Court has recently construed the Second Amendment to establish a private right to possess – and shoot — guns, that right too should be limited by the countervailing right not to be shot.
The right not to be shot is most firmly established in the context of shootings by government officials, such as the killing of Pretti and Good by federal agents. After all, the Constitution prohibits the government from depriving people of “life, liberty or property without due process of law.” Law enforcement’s responsibility is to bring suspects into the justice system, not to execute punishment on the street. That doubly holds true for people who are not suspected of crimes, like Pretti and Good.
The extrajudicial killing of Alex Pretti by border agents in Minneapolis underlines that the right not to be shot also extends to those exercising their gun rights. Contrary to the statements and insinuations of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, FBI Director Kash Patel, Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and President Trump, lawfully carrying a holstered gun does not give law enforcement – or anyone — the authority or justification to shoot you. And it certainly does not provide an after-the-fact justification to assault you if they discover a holstered gun while beating you up.
Pretti’s killing gives all sides of the gun debate an opportunity to rethink longstanding divisions. Some in the gun violence prevention community have long assumed that all public gun carrying threatens public safety (though perhaps none as extremely as Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, a supposed “gun rights” supporter, who falsely claimed – based solely on the fact that Pretti was carrying a holstered gun – that he was “a deranged individual who came in to cause massive damage with a loaded pistol.”) But the videos show exactly the opposite of Senator Mullin’s outlandish fabrication: even after being pummeled by a gang of masked men, Pretti never reached for his weapon. While there are documented risks to public gun carrying, especially when unregulated, Pretti shows critics of public gun carrying that some concealed carry holders can be the epitome of responsibility.
Some in the gun rights community can learn from the fact that many avowed-gun rights supporters blame 37-year old Pretti for legally carrying a holstered handgun, even though they applauded Kyle Rittenhouse, who at 17 years old brought an AR-15 assault rifle across state lines to a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin and used it to shoot three people, killing two. That double standard should inform gun rights supporters that many of their political allies view the right to keep and bear arms not as a foundational Constitutional right, but as political spoils, intended for “me and mine, not thee and thine.”
Most Americans can unite around the obvious principle that people’s legal and constitutional rights must be respected, regardless of whether one agrees with a person’s politics.
There is more potential for uniting around the foundational notions of the Second Amendment. Some gun rights advocates have dismissed the significance of the original vision of James Madison and the Framers, who intended the Second Amendment as a bulwark to enable “well-regulated militia” (today’s national guard) to protect “a free State” against a tyrannical federal government. While that founding principle has seemed arcane for most of U.S. history, it has relevance today, with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz calling out the National Guard, and California Governor Gavin Newsom and other states fighting President Trump’s effort to federalize it.
Similarly, many gun violence prevention supporters have discounted the notion that private gun carrying could be a rational response to the dangers of an overreaching federal government. But more progressives are reportedly buying guns out of fear since President Trump’s election, and I know of progressives recently buying guns after the killing of Good and Pretti.
Americans can also unite around the importance of protecting the exercise of our First Amendment rights to protest, assemble, witness and record what government agents do in public spaces. While Pretti’s holstered and untouched gun did not place the officers who killed him at risk – certainly not after they disarmed him — Pretti did wield a device that posed a grave threat to them – and to ICE’s tactics across the country: a cell phone camera.
Given how counter-factual the “official” accounts of Pretti’s (and Good’s) shootings were when videotapes showed they were fabrications, it is horrifying to imagine how untrue other Administration accounts may be when there is no video showing the truth. Cell phones have documented ICE officers assaulting people, separating families, and killing Americans, and have exposed the Trump Administration’s wildly false narratives of Pretti and Good as “domestic terrorists” who attacked law enforcement. Without citizen witnesses, the government’s falsehoods would be widely accepted.
Likely for that reason, the Trump Administration has equated witnessing and filming ICE operations with unlawfully “impeding” law enforcement, even though the First Amendment protects filming government activities in public places. Then-CBP Commander Greg Bovino went further, claiming that Pretti’s death was a “consequence” of his “choices,” not-so-subtly suggesting that filming ICE or coming to the aid of people they assault, as Pretti did, can get you killed.
Americans can come together to agree that the threat or use of violence should not be used to silence those who document the truth about what is being done in their communities, whether that violence comes from civilians or government agents.
These are scary times. But they provide an opportunity for people to come together to fight for foundational rights and values – including the most fundamental of all – the right to live.