After federal agents shot and killed an intensive care nurse named Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street in broad daylight, many Republicans focused on a specific detail: The victim, they said, was armed.
While it’s true that Pretti had a holstered gun, it’s also true that Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara explained that the nurse had a legal right to have the firearm and a permit to carry it.
Nevertheless, on Saturday afternoon, as much of the country learned of the deadly incident, Donald Trump turned to his social media platform, referred to Pretti as “the gunman” and amplified an apparent photograph of the victim’s firearm.
As many Americans expressed horror in the wake of the developments, the president clung to this one talking point like a life preserver. It began on Sunday afternoon, when he told The Wall Street Journal: “I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets.”
On Tuesday, Trump repeated the line with even greater enthusiasm. Asked during his latest Fox News interview about the shooting, the president said: “I don’t like the fact that he was carrying a gun that was fully loaded and he had two magazines with him.” That came on the heels of a Trump appearance at an Iowa restaurant where he said that Pretti “certainly shouldn’t have been carrying a gun.”
A few hours earlier, while departing the White House, the president told reporters: “You know, you can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns; you just can’t.”
Whether or not Trump understands this, Pretti wasn’t at a protest, and even if he had been, he was legally entitled, under existing law, to carry a firearm. Indeed, well-armed conservatives have repeatedly showed up at public protests in recent years — and federal agents didn’t kill any of them.
But maybe this is the wrong way to examine the president’s comments. In fact, perhaps it would be more constructive to see his position less as incoherent prattling from an official who doesn’t understand the law or governing, and more as an invitation to a very different kind of debate over gun policy.
To hear the sitting Republican president tell it, Americans “can’t have guns” at public gatherings. This creates an unexpected opportunity for reform advocates to introduce legislation to codify Trump’s position into federal law.
Are GOP lawmakers prepared to consider such a proposal, or are they prepared to condemn Trump’s position as unconstitutional nonsense? Watch this space.
