For years, he’s positioned himself as the Second Amendment’s greatest defender. “Your Second Amendment rights are under siege, but they will never, ever be under siege as long as I’m your president,” he told NRA members in 2018. The gun lobby rewarded him with millions in campaign donations. But behind the rhetoric, a pattern has emerged: when the political winds shift, Trump abandons gun owners faster than you can say “due process.”
After the killing of Alex Pretti by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis, those fault lines are cracking open again—and this time, the backlash from his own coalition is escalating.
The Pattern
This isn’t new. After mass shootings, Trump has repeatedly floated gun restrictions that horrify his base, only to retreat when the NRA comes calling.
In February 2018, weeks after the Parkland shooting killed seventeen people, Trump held a televised meeting with lawmakers that shocked Republicans. He accused them of being “petrified” of the NRA. He endorsed red flag laws. And then he said the quiet part out loud: “Take the guns first, go through due process second.”
The NRA scrambled. Chris Cox, the group’s top lobbyist, made an emergency visit to the White House. Trump backpedaled. The red flag push fizzled.
After the Las Vegas massacre in 2017, Trump ordered the ATF to ban bump stocks through executive action—a move the NRA strategically supported because it prevented a broader legislative ban. The gun lobby understood Trump well enough to play the long game. They knew his own Supreme Court appointees would eventually strike the regulation down, which they did in 2024.
Then came the Annunciation Catholic Church shooting in August 2025. The shooter identified as transgender, and Trump’s Justice Department saw an opportunity. Senior DOJ officials held internal meetings about restricting gun rights for transgender Americans entirely—a proposal to declare an entire class of citizens mentally unfit to own firearms.
The right-wing media ecosystem piled on. Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire posted that “when you affirm the perverse fantasies of sick and delusional people—and you do it systematically, at scale—you are creating precisely this kind of catastrophe.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called gender dysphoria “a mental illness” and said trans people who are “willing to destroy themselves” are “willing to destroy others.” Rep. Lauren Boebert demanded Democrats “acknowledge the pattern of transgender violence.” Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk suggested the government should roll back firearm protections for trans people. Laura Loomer declared the trans community a “public safety risk.”
But every major gun rights organization pushed back. The NRA declared it “does not, and will not, support any policy proposals that implement sweeping gun bans that arbitrarily strip law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights without due process.” Gun Owners of America called it a “nonstarter.” The Second Amendment Foundation warned against “singling out” any subset of Americans. The National Association for Gun Rights noted that only courts can adjudicate someone “mentally defective”—not the executive branch.
The proposal quietly died.
Minneapolis
Now comes Alex Pretti.
On January 24, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed the 37-year-old ICU nurse during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis. Pretti, a lawful gun owner with a valid Minnesota carry permit, was recording agents with his phone when he was pepper-sprayed, tackled, and shot nine times. Bystander video shows officers removing a handgun from his waistband before the fatal shots were fired.
Within hours, the administration launched a full-scale character assassination. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called Pretti a “domestic terrorist.” Deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller labeled him “a would-be assassin.” FBI Director Kash Patel declared on Fox News that “no one who wants to be peaceful shows up at a protest with a firearm that is loaded with two full magazines.”
And Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, posted the statement that crystallized the administration’s position: “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you. Don’t do it!”
Then Trump himself weighed in. “Certainly he shouldn’t have been carrying a gun,” Trump said. “I don’t like that he had a gun. That’s a lot of bad stuff.” In another appearance, he added: “You know, you can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns. Can’t walk into this. You can’t do that.”
The gun rights world erupted.
“This sentiment from the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California is dangerous and wrong,” the NRA shot back. “Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.”
Gun Owners of America was sharper: “Federal agents are not ‘highly likely’ to be ‘legally justified’ in ‘shooting’ concealed carry licensees who approach while lawfully carrying a firearm. The Second Amendment protects Americans’ right to bear arms while protesting—a right the federal government must not infringe upon.”
Even Republican lawmakers broke ranks. Representative Thomas Massie wrote: “Carrying a firearm is not a death sentence, it’s a Constitutionally protected God-given right, and if you don’t understand this you have no business in law enforcement or government.”
Even some voices on the right have broken with the administration’s line. A Fox News contributor who worked as a prosecutor said: “I used to watch these videos for a living. This guy is not a domestic terrorist, and I don’t understand why it is so hard for those of us in public service to say from time to time, ‘I got it wrong. I was given bad information.’” Sean Spicer, Trump’s former press secretary, was even more direct: “I’m a huge defender of the Second Amendment. To say that if you show up somewhere armed, you’re somehow vulnerable to getting attacked is absolutely antithetical to everything that conservatives have stood for for decades.”
What Holds This Together?
Here’s the thing about Trump and his base: they don’t have much in common.
Trump is a Manhattan billionaire who lives in a gold-encrusted penthouse that British cultural commentator Peter York compared to “dictator decor”—the same aesthetic favored by Saddam Hussein and Idi Amin. His idea of redecorating the White House involves $250 million ballrooms funded by oligarchs and marble armrests for the Kennedy Center.
He doesn’t hunt. He doesn’t shoot. He couldn’t tell you the difference between a Glock and a 1911. When he talks about the Second Amendment, it’s with the enthusiasm of someone reading talking points rather than someone who’s ever worried about their constitutional right to self-defense.
What Trump and his base share is simpler: worship of Trump himself. He is the strongman who tells it like it is, owns the libs, and makes America’s enemies tremble. He is entertainment, catharsis, and identity rolled into one.
But the MAGA coalition is held together by more than vibes. It’s held together by specific policy promises—immigration enforcement, judicial appointments, deregulation, and gun rights. The Second Amendment is foundational. Gun voters expect absolute fealty.
When Trump’s officials tell legal gun owners they can be shot for exercising their constitutional rights, they’re not stepping on a policy position. They’re stepping on an identity.
Something Has to Give
Gun voters have proven remarkably tolerant of Trump’s heresies. They stuck with him through the bump stock ban. They looked away when he talked about taking guns without due process. They shrugged off the trans gun ban trial balloon.
They did this because Democrats weren’t offering anything better, and because Trump delivered judicial appointments that reshaped Second Amendment jurisprudence for a generation.
But the Pretti killing is different. This isn’t Trump backing down from a restriction after NRA pressure. This is the administration actively arguing that lawful gun owners forfeit their lives by exercising their rights near federal agents.
As University of Minnesota law professor Megan Walsh noted, the administration has “stood up in court and tried to push back against state laws that regulate firearms,” only to now “use an example of a lawful gun owner as justification for force.”
Attorney Clark Neily, who helped bring the landmark Heller case establishing an individual right to firearm possession, observed that the administration’s position makes lawful gun owners “liable to summary execution and post-mortem slander” when exercising their rights. “Which might just be the straw that breaks the MAGA-camel’s back,” he added. “We shall see.”
Will gun voters cross the aisle? Probably not. As The Reload’s Stephen Gutowski wrote, “most Democratic candidates aren’t making strides to woo gun voters anyway.”
But they might stay home. They might withhold donations. They might stop knocking on doors. In the margins where elections are decided, that matters.
Trump has spent a decade selling his supporters a fantasy—that he alone can protect them from a government that wants to take their rights. Now his government is literally taking those rights, one bullet at a time.
The question isn’t whether the MAGA coalition will fracture. It’s whether gun owners will notice before it’s too late.
"I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept."
— Angela Davis
Life Survival: On Accepting vs. Changing
Davis wrote this after watching too many people confuse serenity with surrender. Right now the regime wants you to "accept" that the Fed answers to Trump, that climate agreements are optional, that federal agents can murder citizens with impunity. Fuck that. The things you cannot change are the hand you're dealt—being alive during democratic collapse, watching institutions bend. The things you cannot accept are the outcomes they're pushing—unchecked executive power, planetary suicide, state violence. The trick is knowing which is which. You can't change that Trump's in office. You can refuse to accept what he does with it. You can't change that Pride Month saw 268 attacks. You can change how your community responds. The survival move is learning to hold both—the grief of what's happening and the refusal to normalize it.
https://thistleandmoss.com/p/this-week-is-shaping-up-kind-of-better
To think Trump or for that matter the Republican Party cares about your 2A rights is to mistake the function for the motive.
Make no mistake about it— they will come for the guns.
Now that we are in the final stage where the managerial class is consolidating control and ownership over the worlds resources the threat of power with the people will overcome the tool those weapons have played in the useful construct of the "good and obedient soldiers."
Supporting 2A rights has been an important political tool. Keen Americans have recognized a rigged system for many decades, they understand fake news and deep state powers and this is why they demand their 2A rights above all else— justifiably and rightly so!
The question becomes when this tool becomes too much of a liability to their power, and the second question becomes how do they systematically degrade 2A rights until they cease to function in any meaningful or intended way.
I don't know the answer to these questions but we see the signs. The courts are captured by corporate interests, these same interests have been fighting on our side in many social and political fights— this is the grand deception and it is a cunning way to convince us of their loyalty and coax us into complacency.
There is Hubris on both sides of the board, both thinking they are superior to the other side.
Meanwhile both sides have hidden influence nudging their moves and inciting anger and hate towards the other side of the board— divide and conquer tactics.
Social issue debates are fierce but mean nothing. 2A is one of the core issues that does matter. America is not RED and not BLUE, we are RED WHITE AND BLUE. This is an issue that needs to come from all Americans who care about true sovereignty and freedom. Otherwise when the Blue team takes power again there will be the final nails in the coffin to what this administration is preparing ready with hammer and nails.