Trump v. Second Amendment: The Administration Is Trying To Selectively Apply Gun Rights

Trump and his underlings seem less inclined to worry about the Second Amendment when it protects people outside the MAGA coalition.

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After immigration agents fatally shot Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti on January 24, federal officials described him as a "domestic terrorist" and "would-be assassin" who "wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement." But the only evidence to support those characterizations was the fact that Pretti was carrying a concealed handgun, which he was legally allowed to do.

Although videos of the incident show Pretti never drew that weapon, let alone threatened the agents with it, several officials portrayed his exercise of the constitutional right to bear arms as inherently suspicious. That position provoked criticism from leading gun rights groups, illustrating a widening split between Second Amendment advocates and an administration that claims to support their cause.

Pretti "approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun," the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the day of the shooting, neglecting to mention that the agents did not see the holstered gun until after they tackled Pretti. "The officers attempted to disarm [him] but the armed suspect violently resisted," DHS added, omitting the fact that an agent had removed the gun by the time the shooting started.

FBI Director Kash Patel erroneously claimed Pretti's possession of a handgun was illegal. "You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines, to any sort of protest that you want," Patel said. "It's that simple. You don't have a right to break the law."

Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, went even further. "If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you," he averred. "Don't do it!"

That was too much for the National Rifle Association (NRA), which called the prosecutor's statement "dangerous and wrong." Gun Owners of America likewise condemned Essayli's "untoward comments," noting that "the Second Amendment protects Americans' right to bear arms while protesting—a right the federal government must not infringe upon."

President Donald Trump did not explicitly say Pretti invited his own death by carrying a gun, but he did portray that conduct as troubling. "I don't like it when somebody goes into a protest and he's got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines," he told The Wall Street Journal the day after the shooting. "You can't have guns," he told reporters a couple of days later. "You can't walk in with guns. You just can't."

Trump reiterated that sentiment during a visit to Iowa the same day. "Certainly he shouldn't have been carrying a gun," the president said. "I don't like that he had a gun. I don't like that he had two fully loaded magazines. That's a lot of bad stuff."

According to Pretti's ex-wife, the Journal noted, he "had carried a gun for several years," exercising a right recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court, the state of Minnesota, and local licensing authorities, which had issued him a carry permit. In this context, there was nothing necessarily nefarious about his decision to carry a gun the day he was killed.

It is not surprising that gun rights groups usually allied with Trump rebelled at the notion that carrying a firearm is threatening, illegal, or an invitation to police violence. But Trump's tone deafness also is not surprising, since he adopted his current stance on gun control only after he began thinking about running for president as a Republican in 2012. Prior to that, he positioned himself as a moderate on the issue, faulting Republicans for "walk[ing] the NRA line and refus[ing] even limited restrictions" such as "assault weapon" bans.

By contrast, Trump's authoritarian tough-on-crime instincts are longstanding and seemingly sincere, and they sometimes conflict with his relatively recent embrace of Second Amendment rights. That was clear during his first term, when he spoke favorably of banning "assault weapons," requiring background checks for all gun transfers, and raising the minimum age for buying long guns. After the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, Trump demanded a bump stock ban that the Supreme Court ultimately overturned, deeming it beyond the statutory authority of federal gun regulators. He also expressed support for "red flag" laws, saying police should "take the gun first" and "go through due process second" when they think someone is dangerous.

During his second term, Trump sought to make up for those lapses. He issued an executive order aimed at "protecting Second Amendment rights," and the Justice Department launched a litigation project for that purpose. As part of that project, the Justice Department challenged the District of Columbia's "assault weapon" ban, arguing that a policy Trump had repeatedly embraced was clearly unconstitutional. The Trump administration also joined a challenge to Hawaii's default rule against carrying guns on private property open to the public.

Trump and his underlings seem less inclined to worry about the Second Amendment when it protects people outside the MAGA coalition. In 2025, Justice Department officials toyed with the idea of prohibiting transgender people from owning firearms because they are "mentally ill"—a half-baked proposal that predictably alarmed all of the major gun rights groups.

While that idea apparently went nowhere, the Trump administration has steadfastly defended constitutionally dubious federal gun restrictions, including the National Firearms Act's registration requirements, the Gun Control Act's ban on gun possession by drug users, and the same law's disarmament of people with nonviolent felony records. In all three cases, the NRA and other Second Amendment groups vigorously opposed the government's arguments.

Legal positions aside, the Trump administration does not even consistently pay lip service to Second Amendment rights. Shortly after the president suggested that Pretti was asking for trouble by carrying a gun, Jeanine Pirro, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, provoked more outrage from Second Amendment advocates.

If you "bring a gun" to the nation's capital, Pirro warned during a Fox News interview in February, "you're going to jail." It does not matter whether "you have a license in another district" or whether "you're a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else," she said. "You bring a gun into this district, count on going to jail, and hope you get the gun back."

In response, Reps. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) and Greg Steube (R–Fla.) noted that nonresidents can legally carry handguns in D.C. as long as they comply with local licensing requirements. The National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) called Pirro's comments "unacceptable and intolerable," complaining that "bureaucrats act like the [Second Amendment] does not exist and brag about jailing people for exercising their rights."

Pirro subsequently clarified that she was talking about "individuals who are unlawfully carrying guns." But she still seemed intent on aggressively enforcing D.C.'s strict gun laws without regard to whether defendants pose a threat to public safety. She thinks it makes sense to fight violent crime by jailing otherwise "law-abiding" visitors who erroneously believe their out-of-state carry permits allow them to possess handguns in Washington, D.C. The NRA and the NAGR, by contrast, think that situation should be rectified via interstate reciprocity or by abolishing carry permit requirements altogether, as 29 states have done.

Pirro called herself "a proud supporter of the Second Amendment." But like Trump, she does not seem to understand what that entails.