Alex Peretti’s killing confounds Trump’s Second Amendment politics

Prominent Republicans and gun rights advocates helped spark a White House coup this week after angering that the administration described Alex Peretti, the second person killed this month by a federal officer in Minneapolis, as responsible for his death because he legally owned a gun.

The death did not result in clear shifts in US gun policies or policy, even as President Donald Trump has replaced the lieutenants in charge of his military crackdown on immigration. But important voices in Trump’s coalition have called for a thorough investigation into Peretti’s death while also criticizing inconsistencies in some Republicans’ positions on the Second Amendment.

If this dynamic continues, it could cause problems for Republicans as Trump heads into a midterm election year with voters already growing more skeptical of his overall approach on immigration. The concern is acute enough that Trump’s spokeswoman on Monday sought to reaffirm his brand as a strong supporter of gun rights.

“The president absolutely supports the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens,” White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt told reporters.

“When you carry a gun and confront law enforcement, you raise…the risk that force will be used against you,” Leavitt explained.

The videos contradict the administration’s early statements

This still represents a reversal of the previous administration’s messaging about Pretty’s shooting. It came on the same day the president sent border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota, apparently giving him the edge over Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino, who was in charge in Minneapolis.

Within hours of Prete’s death on Saturday, Bovino suggested Prete “wanted… a massacre of law enforcement,” and Noem said Prete was “brandishing” a weapon and acting “violently” toward officers.

Read more: Videos showing the fatal shooting of Alex Peretti in Minneapolis contradict statements from the Trump administration

“I don’t know of any peaceful protester who showed up carrying a gun and ammunition instead of a sign,” Noem said.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s mass deportation efforts, went further, declaring Peretti a “murderer.”

Bystander videos contradicted each claim, instead showing Preeti holding a cellphone and helping a woman who was pepper-sprayed by a federal officer. Within seconds, Preeti was also sprayed and taken to the ground by several officers. No video released yet has shown him opening his concealed weapon — which he had a Minnesota permit to carry. It appears one of the officers took Pretty’s gun and walked away with it just before the shooting began.

As several videos spread online and on television, Vice President J.D. Vance retweeted Miller’s assessment, while Trump shared an alleged photo of the gunman’s “gun, loaded (with two full extra magazines!).”

Quick reactions from gun rights advocates

The National Rifle Association, which has backed Trump three times, issued a statement that began by blaming Minnesota Democrats whom it accused of stoking the protests. But the group criticized after a federal prosecutor in California said on Channel

The authority said that this analysis was “dangerous and wrong.”

FBI Director Kash Patel amplified the negative reaction Sunday on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo.” No one can “bring a firearm, loaded with multiple magazines, to any type of protest you want. It’s that simple,” Patel said.

A makeshift memorial at the site where a man named Alex Peretti was shot and killed by federal immigration agents as they tried to detain him, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US, January 25, 2026. REUTERS/Tim Evans

Eric Pratt, vice president of Gun Owners of America, was skeptical.

“I have attended protest marches armed, and no one was injured,” he told CNN.

Conservative officials across the country have made the same connection between the First and Second Amendments.

“Showing up at a protest is very American. Showing up with a gun is very American,” Rep. Jeremy Faison, who leads the Tennessee GOP caucus, said on Channel X.

Mike Pence, Vice President in Trump’s first term, called for “a full and transparent investigation into this officer involved in the shooting.”

A different reaction than in the past

Liberals, conservatives and nonpartisan experts noted how the administration’s response differed from previous conservative positions that included protests and weapons.

Weapons were found on several Trump supporters during the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. Trump issued a comprehensive pardon to all of them.

Republicans were critical in 2020 when Mark and Patricia McCloskey had to pay fines after pointing weapons at protesters who marched in their St. Louis neighborhood after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Then there is Kyle Rittenhouse, a counter-protester who was acquitted after fatally shooting two men and wounding another in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during the post-Floyd protests.

“You remember Kyle Rittenhouse and how he became a hero on the right,” Trey Gowdy, a former Republican congressman and Trump’s lawyer, said during one of his impeachment hearings in his first term. “Alex Peretti’s firearm was legally carried… and he never brandished it.”

The fallout “shows how tribal we have become,” said Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who has studied the history of the gun debate. Republicans have spent years talking about the Second Amendment as a way to fight government tyranny, he said.

“The moment someone believes they are on the left, they abandon that principled position,” Winkler said.

Winkler added that Democrats, who have criticized overt and concealed carry laws for years, did not amplify that position after Pretty’s death.

Uncertain implications in an election year

The backlash against the administration from Trump’s core supporters comes as Republicans try to protect their fragile majority in the US House of Representatives and face several competitive Senate races.

Perhaps reflecting the stakes, GOP staffers and campaign aides were reticent Monday to talk about the issue at all.

The House Republican campaign chairman, Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, is sponsoring the most significant GOP firearms legislation of this Congressional term, a proposal to make concealed carry permits reciprocal across all states.

The House Judiciary Committee approved the bill last fall. Asked Monday whether Pretty’s death and the Minneapolis protests might impact debate, an aide to House Speaker Mike Johnson did not provide any update on the bill’s prospects.

Gun rights advocates have scored numerous legislative victories in Republican-controlled states in recent decades, from reducing gun-free zones around schools and churches to expanding gun rights in schools, college campuses and in other public places.

William Sack, legal director of the Second Amendment Foundation, said he was surprised and disappointed by the administration’s initial statements in the wake of Pretty’s shooting. He said Trump’s vacillation “will likely cost them dearly in the heart of the constituency they depend on.”

Associated Press writer Kimberly Crosi in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.