Trying to shift the blame from federal agents for the killing of an protester against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Minneapolis, President Donald Trump and top administration officials landed on a curious strategy this week: attacking gun rights.
It put the White House very publicly at odds with a key part of the GOP base.
“I don’t like that he had a gun,” Trump said of Alex Pretti, the Veterans Affairs nurse gunned down by the feds. “I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines. That’s a lot of bad stuff.”
But the effort to blame Pretti — and insinuating that the simple act of carrying a firearm can justify the use of deadly force by law enforcement — did not go down well with gun advocacy groups and some GOP lawmakers in Congress.
“Our Second Amendment rights do not disappear when we exercise our First Amendment freedoms,” said U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Athens, a gun store owner. “I’ve long said the Second Amendment is the teeth behind the First Amendment, protecting it from government overreach.”
U.S. Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., who owns a gun store in North Carolina, said, “The mere possession of a firearm does not represent a threat justifying lethal force.”
Clyde and Budd did not directly take aim at Trump, but some prominent gun rights groups did.
“The president is simply wrong,” said Dudley Brown, head of the National Association for Gun Rights. “You absolutely have the right to carry the tools for self-defense while lawfully protesting.”
“The First and Second Amendments are not mutually exclusive,” added the Gun Owners of America, tweeting out video of the president’s comments.
While not naming Trump, the largest gun rights group in the nation — the National Rifle Association — issued its own Second Amendment rebuke.
“All law-abiding citizens have a right to keep and bear arms anywhere that they have a legal right to be,” the NRA chimed in, warning against “demonizing law-abiding citizens.”
It wasn’t just Trump. FBI Director Kash Patel also tried to blame Pretti, who was licensed to carry a concealed firearm in Minnesota.
“You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want,” Patel said, citing no law to support his odd claim.
Democrats in Congress could hardly believe what they were hearing. For years, Republicans have claimed that the federal government under a Democratic president would unconstitutionally target gun owners.
“Everything Republicans said would happen is happening now,” U.S. Rep. Norma Torres, D-Calif., said.
Except it’s not a Democrat in the White House who is going after Second Amendment rights and tangling with the NRA. It’s Trump.
Jamie Dupree has covered national politics and Congress from Washington since the Reagan administration. His column appears weekly in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. For more, check out his Capitol Hill newsletter at http://jamiedupree.substack.com
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