Yes, Pretti had a right to bring his weapon to the protest, but he didn’t have a right to commit multiple felonies while carrying it.

No, I’m not a lawyer, but my legal analyses have been sufficient for the University of Wyoming School of Law Firearms Research Center to include me as a presenter (at 14:13ff) on Constitutional Law in their 2024 Symposium on “The National Firearms Act after Bruen.” My legal comments are also posted on their website. Having completed my brag session, it’s time for me to help you become smarter than the average bear.

The Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms. To understand what this means, it is crucially important to distinguish fundamental rights from common privileges and other “rights/privileges” that in this context are neither fish nor fowl:

The Venn diagram illustrates this semantic problem. The terms have some overlap, and we must be clear. The Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right.

In this sense, we must point out that such terms as “transgender rights” are rank efforts to pervert a basic legal concept. While no one has the right to harm the person of someone claiming to be what they aren’t, there is no obligation to grant that mentally ill individual access to the locker room of the opposite sex. That’s a privilege and is subject to the will of the governing authority.

Alex Pretti was a licensed concealed carry holder in Minnesota. He had the fundamental right to bring a gun to a protest. The unartful comments of Treasury Secretary Bessent after Pretti was shot have given RINO Senator Murkowski the excuse to stand with Democrats against immigration enforcement. And therein lies the tale.

Democrats love to throw mud so no one can see the shining truth. Pretti’s death was lawful and had nothing to do with his right to carry. In fact, it had nothing to do with his state of mind, since no officer is a mind-reader. His alleged wonderful “spirit” simply does not matter either. (Note that the poster used AI to generate the false image…)

As I’ve noted before, we have to begin at the beginning. Pretti had completed Minnesota’s mandatory course before getting his carry permit. It included “instruction in the fundamental legal aspects of pistol possession, carry and use, including self-defense and the restrictions on the use of deadly force.” That’s where his legal train runs off the rails. State law says that he violates the terms of his permit if he assaults another person or resists arrest. But even that’s irrelevant.

The only thing that’s important is what the officer(s?) who shot him observed. Period. Full stop. No ICE officer knew of Pretti’s status as a concealed carrier. No one even knew who he was. His history as a left-wing activist in recent weeks wasn’t known. What was known is that Pretti had no right to be where he was or to do what he was doing.

Alex Pretti attended the “mostly peaceful protest” solely to interfere with ICE. That’s a felony. And the way he went about it set the tone.

If you watch the videos, you will see him recording an arrest with his phone. ABC’s Aaron Katersky says that he was “at a distance” from an ICE officer. This is typical left-wing false reporting. Pretti was within a foot of the officer, and that’s close enough to interfere. The officer tries to get him to move away.

Next, he gets into a scrum where he “grapples with” the officers as they try to take him down to the ground. By now, Pretti has become enough of a problem that a larger group of officers surrounds him to assist with his arrest. It is very clear that he’s resisting arrest. He’s “committing a violent forcible felony against [an] ICE officer.”

There is a call of “Gun, Gun, Gun!” and then Pretti moves his hand with something in it. There’s no time for calm reflection.

As Andrew Branca states, “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, that’s going to get you shot… The officers don’t have to be correct in their perception of a threat. They have to have a reasonable perception of a threat.” “Gun!” plus an object in a moving hand implies that the hand holds the gun until proven otherwise.

One other red herring has been thrown into the mix. Pretti’s gun was a Sig-Sauer P220, a model that has been slammed for having uncommanded discharges. The assertion is that the officer who called “Gun!” removed the Sig from Pretti, after which it had an uncommanded discharge. The Sig may have discharged, but that is again irrelevant to the question of whether this was a good shoot. Let’s look at what the videos reveal about what the officers knew:

• Pretti came to the protest with a sidearm. Legal, but not smart, considering what he was planning to do. Also not known to the officers.
• Pretti was filming, but doing it in an obstructive, in-your-face, antagonistic manner. This is interfering with an officer. He’s now a felon.
• Shortly after this, he becomes physically involved with officers who try to get him to the ground to subdue him. This is assaulting an officer, another felony, and resisting arrest, a third felony.
• Pretti refuses to submit, requiring multiple officers to join in from multiple directions.
• One officer sees the gun and calls it out. This elevates the event from resisting arrest to a deadly force threat.
• Apparently, the officer who called “Gun!” was able to remove the gun, but in the chaos (especially with the whistles and horns), either did not or could not call “Clear!” in time to make the other officers know that the gun had been secured.
• Pretti moves his hand while holding an object. Many officers are at angles where all they can see is the movement, and the natural assumption to them is that he’s holding a gun. They don’t have to wait for a perfect view of the object.
• A gunshot is heard. It appears that Pretti is shooting.
• Multiple officers respond to the apparent deadly force event with deadly force of their own. Much of this is nearly simultaneous, with the result that numerous shots were fired, almost certainly by several different officers.

The law is clear. In Barnes v. Felix (2025), a unanimous Supreme Court held that an officer was entitled to consider the totality of circumstances when reacting to a situation. From the viewpoint of the officers, it’s clear that they were responding to a perceived deadly force threat. They were fully justified in firing until they determined that the threat was neutralized. They did not have to make perfect decisions. They had to make decisions that would be reasonable to another officer placed in the same situation.

Alex Pretti had a constitutional right to carry, even at the protest. When he started violating the law, however, his Second Amendment Right became irrelevant. He made himself a criminal and became fully responsible for whatever consequences his criminal acts might cause. It seems that you can’t fix stupid.

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Ted Noel is a retired physician who posts on social media as Doctor Ted. (@Vidzette on X).

[H/T American Thinker]