In the weeks since anti-ICE activist Alex Pretti was shot and killed by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis almost one month ago, it's become almost a trope on the left to compare the conservative reaction with how the right responded to Kyle Rittenhouse's arrest for shooting three protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020. The problem with that, though, is that the only thing Rittenhouse and Pretti had in common is that they were both carrying a gun when they became national headlines.
This trope has now appeared in USA Today, thanks to a column by Florida State University student Logan Walters, who calls out Republican lawmakers and conservatives more generally for supporting Rittenhouse six years ago while condemning Pretti today.
It seems both stories share a common theme: the right to have a gun in a legally ambiguous situation. At the time, neither Rittenhouse nor Pretti was known to be carrying their gun illegally. Instead, Republican lawmakers saw two cases where a gun was present on the victim of a crime and concluded that one was in the right to have the weapon and the other was at fault for it.
To remain consistent, Republican lawmakers, including the Trump Administration, would need to uphold the right to bear arms in the way both Rittenhouse and Pretti did, or be against armament at protests. It cannot be both.
So why are the messages inconsistent on such similar stories? It isn't because of guns. In fact, as mentioned earlier, the guns are just the middleman.
In the first case, the right-wing response was trying to push an anti-rioting narrative, since Rittenhouse was there to protect private property. Against Pretti, the right-wing response was in favor of ICE agents because they were there under the federal order of Donald Trump.
In both cases, the nature of gun rights was not relevant. In fact, gun rights appear secondary to the broader political narratives at play. Instead, they used the guns to promote the pre-existing political ideology that they found would work best as pro-property rights and pro-immigration enforcement.
To his credit, Walters at least notes that "pro-gun people" have been consistent in their position. And while I think he's not wrong about "gun rights" taking a back seat to supporting the Trump adminstration's crackdown on illegal immigration among many Republican politicians, Walters completely ignores the mirrored phenomenon on the left of anti-gun Democrats suddenly feigning support for the Second Amendment in order to criticize the administration (and those officials who made dumb statements about carrying at protests).
All Walters has exposed is the political tribalism that exists today... but by only covering one tribe it seems to me that he's inadvertently revealed his own tribalism.
As much as I've defended Alex Pretti's right to carry his concealed firearm (and will continue to do so), there are some significant differences between his actions and those of Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse was open carrying, while Pretti was carrying concealed. Rittenhouse used his firearm in self-defense. Pretti never even drew his pistol. Rittenhouse attempted to surrender to police at the scene after shooting his attackers. Pretti was thrown to the ground after touching a Border Patrol officer.
These were two very different situations, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to compare the two, in my opinion. Walters would have been better off simply comparing how some pro-2A and anti-gun politicians ended up flipping their scripts in the wake of Pretti's death to make his point about broader political narratives taking a back seat to the issue of gun control, but that would mean indicting Democrats as well as Republicans, and I don't know if Walters is principled enough to do that.
Both the shooting of Alex Pretti and the murder-suicide committed by a transgendered individual in Rhode Island have shown Second Amendment activists that, for some conservatives anyway, the right to keep and bear arms isn't so much a right of the people, but a right for people they agree with.
That could pose a problem for 2A defenders in the future, because we've also seen that those Democrats who talked about Alex Pretti's Second Amendment rights after his death haven't really changed their tune at all. They're just as anti-gun as they were before he was shot and killed, to the point that we're still seeing bills introduced that would ban lawful carrying at protests... even after some Dems have said Pretti was exercising his Second Amendment right when he engaged in that very activity.
Sometimes I think that 2A activists are largely preaching to the choir, but recent events have made me realize that the choir may need some preaching to from time to time. As much as I want liberal and progressive owners to challenge Democrat politicians on 2A issues, conservative 2A activists must be willing to do the same when Republicans get squishy on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
