Politics / January 26, 2026
The ability to kill dissidents at will is more important to Trump and his supporters than the Second Amendment.
FBI director Kash Patel on January 23, 2026.
(Will Lester / MediaNews Group/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin via Getty Images))
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of the most left-wing figures in American public life. Her recently retired GOP colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene is just as far on the right-wing side of the political spectrum. Yet the two are united in seeing the killing of Alex Pretti on Saturday by ICE agents as a constitutional crisis.
Rebuking Vice President JD Vance, Ocasio-Cortez wrote, “You are defending the open killing of everyday Americans for exercising their Constitutional rights.”
Taylor Greene explained the constitutional rights that were violated in this case:
I unapologetically believe in border security and deporting criminal illegal aliens and I support law enforcement. However, I also unapologetically support the 2nd amendment. Legally carrying a firearm is not the same as brandishing a firearm. I support American’s 1st and 4th amendment rights. There is nothing wrong with legally peacefully protesting and videoing.
Politically, the constitutional violation that is likely to pose the most trouble is the Second Amendment. The Republican Party, including Donald Trump, has long taken a maximalist position on gun rights, resisting even the most popular restrictions such as limits on automatic weapons. The radical right, which is in many ways the progenitor of Trump’s MAGA movement, has long warned that gun control is a step on the path toward the end of freedom in the US. Toward this end, the right has presented the most inflammatory version of famous cases where government agents faced off against gun owners, as in the Ruby Ridge standoff in 1992 and the Waco siege in 1993.
I’d like the Second Amendment to be repealed. But as long as it exists, gun owners do have the constitutional right to carry a gun. Alex Pretti was exercising those constitutional rights when he was killed. He had a license to carry a weapon. None of this, if one accepts the constitutional right to gun ownership, justifies his killing.
That doesn’t mean the government hasn’t tried to smear Pretti anyway. The Wall Street Journal reports that federal agents claimed that Pretti was “violently resisting” arrest but “bystander footage appears to tell a different story. A frame-by-frame review by The Wall Street Journal shows a federal officer pulling a handgun away from Pretti. Less than a second later, an agent fires several rounds. Pretti died at the scene.”
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Not just federal agents but the entire Trump administration is lying about this case, smearing Pretti with demonstrably false claims. Stephen Miller, the mastermind behind Trump’s war on immigrants, described Pretti as an “assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem falsely claimed Pretti that “committed an act of domestic terrorism.” The administration also lied about the operation it was conducting during the incident, making claims about a suspect that were contradicted by the Department of Corrections.
These lies show contempt not only for Pretti but also for the constitutional rights he was exercising when he was summarily executed by armed agents of the state.
Yet people who loudly proclaimed the sacredness of the Second Amendment have lined up in support of Trump, proving that MAGA loves authoritarianism more than it does the Constitution. The National Rifle Association, long known for its implacable and absolutist position on gun rights, released a mealy-mouthed statement blaming Minnesota politicians such as Governor Tim Walz for stirring up trouble and calling for more investigation of what happened.
To its credit, the NRA did challenge a claim made by Trump official Bill Essayli, a Republican who is first assistant United States Attorney for the Central District of California and who posted, “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you. Don’t do it!”
Other high-level Trump officials went unchallenged as they cavalierly dismissed Second Amendment rights. On ABC, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had a telling exchange with the reporter Jonathan Karl.
Bessent: I am sorry that this gentleman is dead, but he did bring a nine-millimeter semiautomatic weapon with two cartridges to what was supposed to be a peaceful protest. I think that there are a lot of paid agitators who are ginning things up and the governor has not done a good job of tamping this down.
Karl: As you know he was an ICU nurse, worked for the Veteran’s Administration. There’s no evidence that he brandished the gun whatsoever…
Bessent: But he brought a gun! Have you ever been to a protest…
said, “No one who wants to be peaceful shows up at a protest with a firearm that is loaded with two full magazines. You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want.”
Both Bessent and Patel are in effect arguing for a severe restriction of currently existing Second Amendment rights—something they notably did not call for when MAGA supporters turned up to protests with loaded weapons in the past. Right-wing pundits have taken the cue and have tried to square the circle between ideology and action with an incoherent argument that, while Pretti had a legal right to carry his weapon, he also deserved what he got.
Rod Dreher, a maven of theocrats, argued, “I wonder why a civilian would bring a loaded gun to a protest in which he expected he might clash with feds. Legal? Yes. But stupid? Oh yes.” Another right-wing guru, Michael Shellenberger, had a similar train of thought, or what resembles thought:
Pretti thought it was a good idea to take a gun. Yes, he has a Second Amendment right to do so. Yes, I support that right. I also support the right of young women to walk through dangerous neighborhoods wearing bikinis and high heels but it would be deeply irresponsible for me to recommend it.
On its own terms, it’s hard to know what to make of these claims. If carrying a gun to a protest is a legal right (indeed, a constitutional right), but the cops have the right to kill you for exercising that right, then it is not really a right.
For MAGA, authoritarianism is clearly the highest value, and even earlier commitments to gun rights can fall by the wayside. Mixed in with the authoritarianism is tribalism. The right believes in gun rights, but only for the right sort of people. Notoriously, Ronald Reagan backed gun control in 1967 as governor of California as a measure to combat the Black Panther Party. As the historian Rick Perlstein notes, “right-wing Second Amendment rhetoric and jurisprudence has never been universalist in intent, but, to the maximal extent consistent with coherence (though also, obviously, often incoherently) ALWAYS encodes a narrative of good guys who get to use guns, and bad guys who get to have guns used on them.”
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As the Trump administration continues its authoritarian crackdown, we might see more and more progressives carrying guns. If that happens, then we’ll also enter into a new era where the right decides it hates the Second Amendment—in certain circumstances, that is. This might not be completely bad, but, as MAGA is also prepared to junk the rest of the Constitution, it won’t be very good either.
Former Republican representative Justin Amash posted, “We’re now finding out which Republicans were simply cosplaying as Second Amendment defenders.” It’s likely the answer will be: most of them.
Jeet Heer
Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.
