The killing of Alex Pretti by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis has exposed a rift between the Trump administration and Second Amendment defenders over Americans’ constitutional rights to protest and carry firearms, an issue that is now top of mind in gun-friendly Arizona.

Bystander videos appear to show an agent disarmed Pretti immediately before another agent shoots him, according to a review by the New York Times. Local officials confirmed Pretti was legally permitted to carry the weapon, and no evidence has emerged showing him brandishing the gun at agents.

The incident has sparked broader conversations about constitutional protections and Second Amendment rights after President Donald Trump blamed Pretti for bringing a gun to the protest in the first place.

“You can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns. You just can’t. You can’t walk in with guns. You can’t do that. It’s just a very unfortunate incident,” Trump told reporters outside the White House.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem went a step further than Trump and used Pretti’s decision to carry a firearm to justify the shooting.

“This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement,” she claimed, without evidence.

That stands in stark contrast to the unapologetically pro-Second Amendment stance historically taken by GOP politicians.

A gun culture

The whole ordeal raises questions about how ICE agents will react in Arizona, where gun ownership is widespread — a point Attorney General Kris Mayes made in a controversial interview with 12 News.

“We also have a lot of guns in Arizona; we’re a gun culture in this state,” Mayes said.

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Senate Minority Leader Priya Sundareshan (D-Tucson) said the attorney general’s comments were proven prescient by Pretti’s death.

“People across the political spectrum have and bear arms and that creates the conditions for the dangerous combustible situation that we anticipate will continue to see,” she said. “That her warning came just before what happened with Alex Pretti, I think, shows how true that is.”

Arizona’s gun culture crosses political lines.

Over the last decade, protesters from both right and left wing groups have openly carried assault rifles at the state Capitol. In 2017, a Phoenix New Times reporter documented anti-Trump counterprotesters carrying assault rifles near a Make America Great Again march.

There were also far right protests challenging the 2020 election results, anti-gun legislation and COVID-era mask mandates.

Sen. Brian Fernandez (D-Yuma), a gun owner, suggested Pretti’s death shows that it may be armed Arizonans exercising their Second Amendment rights who are at risk.

“Since when did exercising that constitutional right turn a patriot into a criminal in the eyes of the president?” Fernandez said. “Where was this outrage in 2020, when armed citizens gathered to protest the election results? Or the COVID mandates? We were told they were defenders of liberty.”

Arizona’s gun laws allow most citizens over the age of 18 to openly carry a gun, and most people over 21 can carry a concealed firearm.

“You have the same rights no matter where you are,” said Charles Heller, a co-founder of the Arizona Citizens Defense League, a gun rights group.

Heller said those rights allow adults to carry guns in most situations, including protests. He added there are only a limited number of places where you can’t carry a gun under state law.

And Heller said the government, including Trump, can’t change that.

“The president’s comments are irrelevant,” Heller said. “Your rights don’t come from the president. You’re born with your rights. The government — the purpose of Arizona’s Constitution in Article II, Section 2, is that all power is inherent to the people and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and the purpose of government is to protect the rights of those people.”

Republican reactions

The comments coming out of the Trump administration drew some condemnation from other Republican elected officials and gun rights groups, including the National Rifle Association.

“Our Constitution provides citizens protection from the government. We have a right to free speech, to peaceably assemble and to bear arms,” Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran wrote on social media.

In Arizona, Republican officials have routinely defended or remained silent when activists brought firearms near government buildings.

“So we’re going to continue to stand behind the people of Arizona and every one of their rights, including Second Amendment rights,” House Speaker Steve Montenegro (R-Goodyear) said when asked about Arizonans’ rights to carry guns while protesting after Pretti’s killing.

His counterpart in the Arizona Senate, President Warren Petersen, is also an ardent gun rights advocate, who lists defending the Second Amendment on campaign materials as he seeks to become the state’s next attorney general.

Just months ago, Petersen took to social media to say that “society is safer when people exercise their right to carry.”

But now his answer is more nuanced.

“Well, if you’re in a public space, yeah, I mean, you have the right to carry, that doesn’t go away. What you can’t do is interfere with what is happening with ICE,” Petersen said.

He affirmed that lawmakers will defend Arizonans’ constitutional rights but said that he also agrees with the president that people shouldn’t bring guns to protests.

“To bring a weapon to a protest, yeah, that’s probably not the best idea,” Petersen said.

‘Contradictory’

Rep. Oscar De Los Santos, the top Democrat in the Arizona House, called the change of tune from some Republicans on when and where guns are appropriate hypocritical.

“I mean, there’s no question it’s contradictory. They’ve shown up to protest with guns right where we’re standing, semi-automatic weapons,” said De Los Santos, who has seen Republican leaders resist any effort to regulate guns in the name of the Second Amendment.

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And, in something of a role reversal, it is Democrats like Sundareshan and Fernandez who are more unequivocal in their defense of Arizonans’ right to bear arms than their Republican counterparts.

“Arizona Republicans are completely silent right now as the Trump administration is violating a whole host of our constitutional rights, including the Second Amendment, so it is a strange world we live in,” Sundareshan said. “But Democrats are here to say, we recognize the constitutional rights that exist in our Bill of Rights and elsewhere, and we’re here to defend them.”

But they are also concerned that people exercising those rights could now have a target on their back as reports roll in that federal immigration agents are increasing their presence in Arizona.