Alex Pretti’s Murder by Border Customs Patrol Officers Demands a Reevaluation of U.S. Firearms Policies

Following the tragic shooting death on January 24 by Border Customs Patrol (BCP) officers of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse for the Minnesota Veterans Administration, I wrote a meme on social media that included the words:

“Legislators who think open carry and/or concealed carry gun laws should be a constitutional right might want to rethink this!”

I raised the issue of the legal carrying of firearms in some states like Minnesota because the primary difference between federal officials shooting and killing Alex as opposed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the shooting death of Renee Nicole Good just weeks before on January 7 may have been that Pretti was legally carrying a holstered handgun with him and Renee was not. Both of these demonstration observers, however, were killed by federal officers.

A man responded to my meme asserting that “Open and concealed carrying of guns is an inalienable right.”

To this I replied: “I think you are confusing the issue with Thomas Jefferson’s famous words in the Declaration of Independence in which he wrote:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or in our Constitution do they claim that any person has an “inalienable right” to either open or concealed carrying of a weapon. The Constitution’s Second Amendment, however, states:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

But did President Donald Trump wish to “abridge” Alex Pretti’s legal right to carry a weapon as determined by the legislature of Minnesota when he argued following Alex’s killing:

“You can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns. You can’t do that,” Trump responded on January 27 to a reporter’s question. The president called Pretti an “agitator and perhaps, insurrectionist” in a post on Truth Social.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Alex Pretti had committed an “act of domestic terrorism.” And White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller described him as a “would-be assassin.”

Trump, Noem, and Miller’s judgements came before any of the facts or even in advance of any type of investigation into the incident.

Previously, however, Trump advocated for the broadest possible interpretation of gun rights by arguing that individuals must be permitted to carry arms to virtually all public places. For example, he lauded Kyle Rittenhouse as the “poster boy” for the issue of self defense when as a 17-year-old, he shot three men killing two while at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020.

In addition, Trump ordered metal detectors taken down at his “Stop the Steal” Rally on the Ellipse behind the White House on January 6, 2021, to allow his gun toting supporters entry because, as he is reported to have stated, “I don’t f***ing care if they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me.”

Thousands of primarily right-wing demonstrators, many armed with handguns and military style rifles, surrounded the Michigan State Capitol in 2020 (April 15 in “Operation Gridlock”; April 30 in “American Patriot Rally”; and on May 14) to protest that state’s Covid-19 lockdown of schools and municipal buildings.

In his contradictory pronouncements on issues of open and concealed carry of weapons, Trump, in fact, echoes the vast distinctions on laws and judicial ruling among and between the states.

“Open carry” means that firearms are visible to the public and in many states, must be worn in a holster. “Concealed carry” means that weapons are hidden from plain view.

If carrying weapons throughout the streets and into public places had been settled as “inalienable” rights, the United States would impose a unitary standard. But this has not been the case.

Some states permit “loaded open carry,” which is defined as openly carrying a firearm with a bullet (or round) in the chamber, whereas “unloaded open carry” is carrying without a round in the chamber.

“Anomalous states” are those with open carry laws varying by county or city in which one municipality may permit this while another may not.

“Non-permissive states” include states that ban or severely restrict open carry.

In addition, some states and municipalities that allow open carry do not permit concealed carrying of firearms. And states vary where carrying firearms are admissible.

Some states allow carry into most public spaces, and even onto college and university campuses and houses of worship. Some allow carry into public spaces only with the expressed permission of the business owner, chief executive officers of schools of higher education, and clergy.

Some critical questions we must address:

1. What are the reasons why some people carry weapons, either openly or under concealment? And do these reasons justify or cancel a right to do so?
2. If carrying is truly meant under the Second Amendment as ”the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,” then why is it infringed in some states and municipalities?
3. Does carrying actually provide for the safety of the individual and for society at large, or, rather, does it jeopardize the public’s collective security?
4. On the micro level, did Alex Pretti’s carrying of a weapon increase the likelihood of BCP officers shooting him because they saw him as a threat to their safety? In other words, did carrying a weapon protect Alex?

“Might makes right” represents the Trump administration’s philosophical underpinning; lies, cruelty, and strength of force are its means; and total power and control are its ends.

BCP might have shot and killed Alex whether or not he had been carrying just as they murdered Renee weeks before. And Trump’s replacement of Greg Bovino for his Border Czar Tom Homan is simply just a chip off the same ICE block, which will most likely change virtually nothing.

While the larger questions must be addressed regarding the Trump administration’s overall draconian anti-immigrant policies, the killing of Alex Pretti places on our society the urgent and critical demand to come to a greater consensus regarding the country’s out-of-control and profoundly deadly firearms laws, which most likely far exceed what the framers of our Constitution had even imagined.