On Constitutional Rights
Tyranny and Hypocrisy
According to conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, "The Second Amendment remains liberty’s most essential safeguard, and it will remain as such until when, freed from the threats of tyranny, war and crime, all of humanity may 'beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.'"¹ This right to bear arms is often cited as one that makes the United States uniquely free and independent, because in the event that tyranny overtakes our government, the American people would have their second amendment right to fight back.
The irony that this hypothetical value is highlighted by the institution responsible for Project 2025—an initiative focused on consolidating the power of the federal government into the executive branch, i.e. making the federal government more tyrannical—is just one of many examples of hypocrisy in conservative American politics in the twenty-first century.
Another is the conservative political movement that forces women to give birth to children against their will, yet neglects the safety of those children by poorly controlling access to guns; this lack of gun control leads directly to innocent children being massacred in schools. And because most conservative lawmakers are reluctant to place limitations on who can bear a firearm, children are subject to the very threats of tyranny, war, and crime that the Second Amendment supposedly counters. American children are subjected to the tyranny of violence. A war on their bodies. And the crime of their mass murder. Yet—this is made out to be an unavoidable cost, because again: if the American people ever come under siege by their own federal government, Americans must have the right to bear arms and fight back.
So rarely has that hypothetical been tested as it was this past Saturday.
On Saturday morning, VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti was legally exercising his First Amendment right to free speech by observing the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in his city of Minneapolis, MN. At the same time, he was exercising his Second Amendment right to bear arms; as a concealed carry permit holder, he legally carried a gun, holstered on his waistband and beneath his jacket. As a peaceful observer, he was not acting in a threatening way toward officials, as evidenced by multiple angles of video footage from that morning.
Unlike the many January 6, 2021 insurrectionists who invaded the Capitol building carrying weapons and firearms², Alex Pretti’s actions do not indicate any effort to use his firearm to rise up against the the federal government. Though confoundingly, the degree of government actions that might be considered “tyrannical” in each of these circumstances was very different. In Pretti’s case, he and his neighbors had been witnessing their city be invaded by masked and nameless ICE and CBP agents, approaches to policing that had injected fear and violence into their neighborhoods, and the kidnapping and removal of refugees—including children—who had a legal right to reside in the city. January 6th insurrectionists, on the other hand—whom were later pardoned by President Trump, including individuals who brought firearms to the Capitol³—were intending to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election results. In other words, those pardoned individuals had entered a government building to disrupt a fundamentally democratic process. And yet, despite this contrast, by the end of the weekend, Alex’s decision to have a concealed carry weapon on his person while exercising his right to free speech seemed to draw far more criticism from the right than the decisions of insurrectionists to intimidate government officials and disrupt the gears of democracy.
The Murder
What happened on Saturday morning happened fast, so it is worth articulating the circumstances and order of events. According to multiple sworn affidavits, in the time leading up to his death, Alex Pretti was helping to direct traffic, helping a woman find a place to park, recording video on his phone, supporting other observers who were being threatened with bodily harm, and trying to help a person who had been violently pushed to the ground. One witness—a children’s entertainer—stated in their affidavit, "I didn't see him reach for or hold a gun."⁴ Another—a pediatrician—confirmed in theirs, "I did not see him attack the agents or brandish a weapon of any kind."⁵
Footage also proves that immediately before things escalated, Alex Pretti’s left hand was empty and raised palm-out, and his right hand was holding his phone up at chest height.⁶ Not only did Pretti’s gun continue to remain holstered during his interaction with CBP agents, but (a) his focus remained on helping other bystanders, and (b) his hands were both empty after he slid his phone into his coat pocket. He did the latter swiftly when a border patrol agent began to pepper spray him at close range. Given that the spray was discharged inches from his eyes, he was presumably incapacitated from that point on.
However, even if there were concerns about Alex Pretti having a gun at this time, officers could have avoided escalation of force by taking steps to communicate with everyone involved, intentionally slowing down events with their own behavior, and disarming and/or detaining Alex. Instead, agents continued to quickly escalate actions through physical force. They brutally beat an already pepper sprayed Alex, and at one point repeatedly hit him with what appeared to be a metal canister. Even then, Pretti did not unholster his gun, and he showed no signs of planning to do so.
In the end, Pretti's gun was only removed from its holster when an officer grabbed it from his waistband and backed away with it. In footage, it was so uninvolved in the proceedings that the officer appeared to have to search for the gun while Pretti endured the beating.⁶
Then, seconds later, Alex Pretti had been shot ten times.
The Aftermath
Immediately after Alex Pretti was murdered, Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller labeled Pretti a "domestic terrorist". Gregory Bovino—in charge of DHS actions in Minneapolis—accused him of intending to "massacre law enforcement". Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem insisted Pretti intended "to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement", with the DHS claiming that the ten shots fired into Pretti's body were defensive in nature, and that one officer involved "fear[ed] for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers."⁷
These statements are all so transparently false. Footage shows that it all escalated when an officer violently pushed a woman to the ground before dispensing peppers pray. After he stowed his phone, Pretti's hands were both empty. He was beaten and likely struggling to see due to pepperspray. He was cowering and on all fours in the street. In the last seconds before his death, he could not have been threatening use of his gun, because he no longer even possessed it. And yet multiple officers still chose to shoot him ten times. And so Alex Pretti's death was not the result of defensive actions. In fact, if anyone feared for their life, it was the man with half a dozen officers punching and kicking him while he lay on the ground, half-blinded and in pain—the man on whom these officers used deadly force.
Now, some have pointed out that—due to the scrum—some officers may not have realized that Alex Pretti was no longer armed. But even if that were true, the officers' weapons shouldn't have been discharged in the first place. Instead of taking professionally recommended de-escalation steps, they decided to take out their own guns and shoot into the middle of a struggle. They murdered Alex Pretti, but in the chaos that they caused, it's a miracle they didn't also happen to shoot any bystanders, patrons or staff in one of the many surrounding businesses, or even one of their fellow officers. Indeed, this is the exact opposite of what experts describe as law enforcement best practices.
After the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in 2020, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights entered a court enforceable Settlement Agreement with the City, which refers numerous times to law enforcement's "duty to de-escalate and duty to use tactics to avoid the necessity of force."⁸
Police reform experts consistently refer to the importance of de-escalation tactics in law enforcement trainings and policies, and strong communication between agents and citizens.⁹ As Chief O'Hara stated in an interview with the New York Times after the murder of Renée Good, these techniques were not at all apparent the interaction that led up to her death. In fact, the agent who ultimately murdered her had taken the completely inadvisable step of putting himself in front of a motor vehicle, which is something police officers are always trained to avoid even in a standard traffic stop.¹⁰ Given the breadth of video evidence in Pretti's case, DHS officer decisions are now being equally criticized.
In that same interview, Chief O'Hara emphasized that, "The role of the police and law enforcement in the United States is first off to protect life, but it’s also to ensure people’s human rights and their constitutional rights. And people in this country have a First Amendment right to observe, record and object to government activity."¹⁰ In the case of Alex Pretti, he was denied his First Amendment right, and he was smeared by government officials for exercising his Second Amendment right by simply carrying a holstered firearm—which, notably, was forcibly removed from his person by a federal government agent. He was denied two of his Constitutional rights, and he was murdered for exercising them. The children’s entertainer—who later introduced herself as Stella Carlson in a CNN interview—described watching the agents manipulate Alex’s body after the shooting, “only to discover that it could be because they wanted to count the bullet wounds to see how many the ‘got’, like he’s a deer.” Amidst the screaming and horror of onlookers, she described them “looking at us and laughing at us.”¹¹ This callous response is yet another exhibit of DHS officers not caring about the actual "security" of our homeland. It shows actions informed by ego, impulse, blood thirst, perceived impunity, and narrow-mindedness.
Never Again
That leaves us with a number of questions regarding the status of our rights, our safety, and our values:
If the First Amendment protects our right to free speech and the Second Amendment protects one's rights to bear arms and rise up against a tyrannical government, why was a citizen who was using only his freedom of speech while legally carrying—not threatening agents—gunned down?
If the (now) right-wing government overreach rallying cry of "Don't Tread on Me" has been applied to such laws so inoffensive as the government requiring citizens to wear medical masks during a deadly public health crisis,¹² why does the statement not also extend to the right of citizens to protest the violence and fear being imposed on communities by unnamed, masked agents?
If a century ago, we proudly invited immigrants from all over the world to take refuge in the United States, saying, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", why do we not still honor that history by protecting immigrants and refugees—so many even here here by legal means— from inhumane and un-American actions such as kidnapping, family separation, confinement, hostile conditions, denial of medical care, and brutality while incarcerated?
Perhaps most alarming of all revelations following the murder of Renée Good and Alex Pretti: we have seen these behaviors by governments before.
Humankind came out of World War II saying, "Never Again.” Never again would we allow the atrocities committed during the Holocaust to occur. Never again would humanity allow neighborhoods to be ruled by the terror of the state, create conditions where neighbors are incentivized to turn on neighbors, allow people to be forcibly removed from their homes and taken away, and incarcerated. Never again would we allow people be targeted for removal simply because of their cultural identity.
“Never Again” is not a wishful statement. It is not a hope that by saying it, we manifest it. “Never Again” is a commitment. It is our resolve to do everything within our power to actively prevent atrocities from ever happening ever again. If that means observing raids with a whistle and a phone, interrupting terror with one’s physical presence, and creating a sense of safety in numbers, that is what it takes. If that means calling state representatives—who may be waffling on their commitment to voting against ICE funding—to let them know that their voters want them to vote ‘no’, that is what it takes. If that means contributing to mutual aid funds and intervening in crises and building fluency in what DHS officers can and can’t legally do so that they can be held accountable by the community, that is what it takes.
Too many have historically stayed silent when government regimes kidnapped and murdered citizens, and that is how civilizations have entered their darkest histories. If Americans stay silent now, we are inviting humankind's shameful history of fascism into our present, and into our everyday lives.
Sources:
¹ Swearer, Amy. “Second Amendment Liberty’s Most Essential Safeguard 200 Years Later.” The Heritage Foundation, 3 Jan. 2023, https://www.heritage.org/gun-rights/commentary/second-amendment-libertys-most-essential-safeguard-200-years-later.
² “Fact Check: US Capitol Attack Rioters Had Weapons, Including Firearms.” Reuters, 16 Jan. 2025, https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-capitol-attack-rioters-had-weapons-including-firearms-2025-01-16/.
³ “Everytown Response to Trump Pardoning January 6th Insurrectionists.” Everytown for Gun Safety, 21 Jan. 2025, https://www.everytown.org/press/everytown-response-to-trump-pardoning-january-6th-insurrectionists/.
⁴ Case No. 25-cv-04669: Declaration of Stella Carlson. United States District Court - District of Minnesota, 24 Jan. 2026, https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.229758/gov.uscourts.mnd.229758.107.0.pdf.
⁵ Case No. 25-cv-04669: Declaration of XXX XXX, M.D. United States District Court - District of Minnesota, 24 Jan. 2026, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26505794-alex-pretti-pediatrician-witness-account/.
⁶ Erden, Bora, et al. “Timeline: A Moment-by-Moment Look at the Shooting of Alex Pretti.” The New York Times, 25 Jan. 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/24/us/minneapolis-shooting-alex-pretti-timeline.html.
⁷ Pager, Tyler, and Hamed Aleaziz. “How the Trump Administration Rushed to Judgment in Minneapolis Shooting.” The New York Times, 25 Jan. 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/us/politics/trump-administration-minneapolis-shooting-response.html.
⁸ Settlement Agreement and Order. 31 Mar. 2023, https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/Download/FileV2/30804/MDHR-v-City-of-Minneapolis-Settlement-Agreement.pdf.
⁹ Larson, Henry, et al. Why De-Escalation Training and Communication Matters When Federal Agents Police City Streets. Jan. 2026, https://www.wunc.org/2026-01-25/why-de-escalation-training-and-communication-matters-when-federal-agents-police-city-streets.
¹⁰ “‘A Breaking Point’: The Minneapolis Police Chief on ICE.” The New York Times, hosted by Michael Barbaro, The New York Times, 12 Jan. 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/podcasts/the-daily/minneapolis-police-chief-ice-shooting.html. The Daily.
¹¹ Exclusive: “Pink Coat Lady” Who Recorded Fatal Encounter between Federal Officers and Alex Pretti Speaks to Anderson Cooper. Interviewed by Anderson Cooper, CNN, 27 Jan. 2026, https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/27/us/video/ac360stellacarlson.
¹² Peery, Lexi. Utah’s Mask Mandate Sparks Anti-Government Protests In St. George. Nov. 2020, https://www.kuer.org/health-science-environment/2020-11-12/utahs-mask-mandate-sparks-anti-government-protests-in-st-george.
