The killing of Alex Pretti sparked a response from all sorts of places. The comments from the Trump administration earned a rebuke from every gun rights group in the nation, to some degree or another. They spoke incorrectly and were called out on it, even if Trump later repeated the problematic comments.
But Pretti wasn't the first concealed carrier killed by law enforcement by a long shot.
A few years ago, a man named Philando Castile was pulled over by police. He informed them that he was carrying a firearm, and while trying to get his wallet, an officer argued that he thought Castille was going after his gun and shot him. Castile did not survive the encounter.
A lot of gun rights groups failed to comment on that shooting.
At The Guardian, someone is asking why that is.
The killing of Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis has sparked a thorny conversation among gun rights groups and Trump administration officials about the second amendment and the right to carry concealed firearms at protests and demonstrations. Among the questions is which cases the movement rallies behind – and which it doesn’t.
In the hours and days after Pretti’s killing, dozens of local national and local gun rights groups lambasted federal officials including Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, and Gregory Bovino, a senior border patrol official, who baselessly claimed that Pretti’s carrying of a handgun proved that he planned to harm and kill border patrol agents. Prominent gun rights organizations, including Gun Owners of America (GOA) and the National Rifle Association (NRA), called for an independent investigation into the shooting and defended Pretti’s right to carry a gun.
The reaction from the NRA, in particular, was markedly different from the one it adopted nearly a decade ago when it was called on to speak on the killing of another legal gun owner by law enforcement.
In July 2016, 32-year-old Philando Castile, a Black man, was shot and killed in front of his girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter by a police officer in St Anthony, Minnesota, a suburb of St Paul. Castile was pulled over and told the officer that he had a gun – for which he had a permit – in the car. Seconds after the disclosure, the officer shot Castile five times, killing him.
At the time, the NRA was the nation’s most prominent and influential gun rights group and was working to defend and expand policies that would allow people to carry their firearms with and without permits. Two days after the shooting, the organization released a statement calling for an investigation, but it didn’t use Castile’s name and didn’t comment the following year when the officer who shot Castile was acquitted of manslaughter.
And a lot of people were pissed at the NRA's silence, which didn't get mentioned by the writer at The Guardian.
I was and am one of them.
However, I also had a couple of off-the-record conversations with some folks at the NRA since then, and while I disagree with the organization's decision, the reason they didn't comment then was that it was a law enforcement situation that would work its way through the legal system, and they tend not to comment on those.
With Pretti, there likely wouldn't have been any comments from anyone if Trump administration officials didn't suddenly decide that it was wrong that Pretti was armed in accordance with Minnesota law, minus the petty misdemeanor of failing to have his permit on him at the time. Had they simply remained silent or simply said there would be an investigation into what happened, most groups would have remained quiet.
In the wake of Castile's shooting, no one in the White House claimed that he shouldn't have been driving while armed and black, or anything of the sort. Had they done that, it likely would have gotten them to say something.
Now, I'd like to think that part of the response was also learned because of the outrage over the silence to Castile's killing, but I can't prove that. These cases are just too different to say so. Yes, both had permits and were carrying when killed by law enforcement, but beyond that, there were ridiculously few similarities.
Castile was trying to reach for his wallet and explaining to the officer he wasn't reaching for his gun when he was shot. Pretti was resisting arrest. Castile was simply driving down the street when he was pulled over. Pretti was part of an effort to interfere with law enforcement operations.
There were mountains of differences between the two killings, and while Pretti's case deserves a full and fair investigation, it's not like he was just some guy who was randomly shot by police.
Yeah, the NRA spoke out, but not because Pretti was shot.
They spoke out because the administration implied that people carrying guns were up to something.
Big. Freaking. Difference.
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment.
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