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In 2020, Republicans featured a confident couple at their national convention who had become a cause célèbre among conservatives for pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in their St. Louis neighborhood. Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who later pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and gave up their firearms, supported Donald Trump’s re-election and cautioned that a Democratic-led government could target all gun owners if not stopped.
Just six years later, Mark McCloskey voiced a remarkably comparable view. “Say goodbye to the Second Amendment. Once again, the government [is] using crisis to take away your rights,” he stated on Monday.
McCloskey—who gained national fame for his Second Amendment advocacy and later became a supporter of those charged for their actions on Jan. 6, 2021—was talking about Trump and his Republican allies. On Monday, days after federal agents killed a second protester against immigration raids in Minneapolis, the White House again implied that 37-year-old Alex Pretti was at fault because he had a legally owned gun in his waistband while filming—not the federal Border Patrol agents who restrained him, took his weapon, and shot him.
“Any gun owner knows that when you are carrying a weapon, when you are bearing arms, and you are confronted by law enforcement, you are raising the assumption of risk and the risk of force being used against you,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a heated briefing on Monday.
This attitude that he deserved it originates from the highest levels of the administration. After Pretti was killed on Saturday in Minneapolis—an incident recorded from numerous angles showing officers firing at least 10 rounds into him in five seconds—administration officials tried to portray Pretti as the instigator, an “assassin” intending to “massacre law enforcement.”
This language is not being well received in Washington or even among some parts of the Trump alliance. The MAGA movement, after all, celebrated people like the McCloskeys as heroes for defending their property and using guns as means of deterrence. “That’s what the guns were there for, and I’d do it again anytime the mob approaches me,” Mark McCloskey said after his guilty plea in 2021.
A similar type of defiance was shown by—and admiration given to—Kyle Rittenhouse, who was found not guilty of criminal charges after killing two people during the 2020 unrest in Kenosha, Wis. Rittenhouse, who became a symbol of anti-Black Lives Matter sentiment, stated he went to Kenosha to protect property and acted in self-defense.
It is nearly impossible to reconcile supporting Second Amendment rights for figures like the McCloskeys and Rittenhouse while rejecting those same rights when exercised by Pretti. For generations, gun ownership has been considered a fundamental right by conservatives. (To be accurate, it is the primary concern for very few voters, typically around 3% to 5% in polls.) Any threat to gun rights was instantly treated as heresy, completely unacceptable. Yet here is Trump, who was elected with strong backing from voters who prioritized his pro-gun stance, now weakening that very principle to quell rising dissent in Minneapolis.
As a result, the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, and Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus have all distanced themselves from Trump’s position. Some of Trump’s usual allies have also done so. (For a list of those stepping back or wavering, see .)
Minnesota has historically permitted fairly broad gun rights. In fact, you can even carry a weapon into the state capitol with a permit. But this has not prevented the Trump administration from adopting a stance that has characterized much of his return to office: .
“I don’t like any shooting. I don’t like it,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal. “But 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 also. That doesn’t play good either.”
Many senior officials in his Administration have supported him.
“No one who wants to be peaceful shows up at a protest with a firearm that is loaded with two full magazines,” FBI Director Kash Patel said.
Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino added: “We respect that Second Amendment right, but those rights don’t count when you riot and assault, delay, obstruct and impede law enforcement officers and, most especially, when you mean to do that beforehand.”
This may give the impression that some of the nation’s leading Republicans have revised their positions on the Second Amendment. However, intellectual consistency is frequently dispensable in Trump’s circle. The President himself has demonstrated a clear disregard for objective truth. If a statement is persuasive, it is sufficiently true, he tends to suggest.
Americans have taken note. A mere 32% of Americans believe the President is honest and trustworthy, according to an Economist-YouGov poll this month. It echoes the advice from Trump’s first term that turned into a self-parody: Take him seriously but not literally.
But for the political right, guns are in a category of their own. It involves both glorifying gun ownership and a sense of persecution among those whose gun rights are threatened. However, Pretti does not appear to belong to the right’s preferred group, which is why we are observing cracks—though not a full break—in the Republican base over this issue.
Yet it might be individuals like the McCloskeys who cause the most significant disturbance within Trump’s orbit. When they addressed the Republican convention via video in 2020, they warned about the decline of suburbs and the spread of cheap apartment buildings, while also presenting themselves as victims: “What you saw happen to us could just as easily happen to any of you who are watching from quiet neighborhoods around our country.”
By Monday, there was a significant change, as Mark McCloskey expressed his sense of betrayal over the messages from Washington. “So now Kash Patel, who is supposed to uphold the Constitution, says it is a Capital Offense (meaning it’s OK to kill you) if you lawfully carry your weapon and ammo to a protest.”
A comparable disavowal of Trump’s position came from Rittenhouse, who has dedicated himself to advocating for the Second Amendment.
“Carry everywhere. It is your right. #ShallNotBeInfringed,” Rittenhouse posted on social media.
The anger is genuine. The outcome is less clear.
— With reporting by Nik Popli
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