A war of words over deeply held beliefs erupted on the political right in the hours after a federal agent shot and killed Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street Saturday, pitting top officials in President Donald Trump’s administration against Second Amendment defenders in his electoral base.

At the core of the debate is that Pretti — who was permitted to carry a gun in public in Minnesota — had a concealed firearm on his person that eyewitness videos show federal agents apparently discovering and removing during the altercation that led to his death. Videos do not appear to show Pretti holding the weapon during that confrontation.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sought to justify the killing by asserting at a news conference that Pretti “attacked those officers, had a weapon on him, and multiple dozens of rounds of ammunition, wishing to inflict harm on these officers coming, brandishing like that and impeding their work that they were doing.” No evidence has been provided to back up this account.

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Noem argued that his possession of a firearm demonstrated that he did not intend to remain peaceful.

“I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign,” Noem said on Saturday.

On Sunday, when asked on Fox News if it is protocol to use deadly force on a disarmed person, Noem said, “That’s all part of this investigation.”

The attempt to explain Pretti’s killing by noting that he had a gun has also been mentioned by Trump, FBI Director Kash Patel, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and others.

In a few moments, Pretti’s killing turned some Trump supporters, including members of his administration, against generations of conservative orthodoxy on the Second Amendment. At the same time, it appeared to serve as a wake-up call for gun-rights activists that a Republican-run government, not just a Democratic-run one, could infringe on the Second Amendment.

An instructive exchange played out on X. Bill Essayli, a federal prosecutor in California appointed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, infuriated gun-rights activists with a series of posts expressing similar sentiments to Noem’s — “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you” — and accusing critics of being members of antifa.

None of that sat well with defenders of the Second Amendment, who are accustomed to having their right to bear arms challenged by Democrats, not Republicans.

“Oh I’m Antifa now?” Aidan Johnston, the director of federal affairs for the Gun Owners of America, wrote on X in response to Essayli. “I guess @TheJusticeDept is back to targeting gun owners as domestic terrorists. You can want illegals & criminals off the streets and not want to see CCW [concealed carry weapons] permit holders get executed for ‘approaching’ law enforcement.”

The National Rifle Association attacked Essayli for “demonizing law-abiding citizens.”

But the group, which has long sparred with Democratic presidents, noticeably held back from criticizing the Trump administration too directly. Instead, in a post on X, it essentially blamed “radical progressive politicians” like Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, for causing the situation, saying they “have incited violence against law enforcement officers who are simply trying to do their jobs.”

Walz and other Democratic leaders have repeatedly called for calm, while noting the destabilizing presence the thousands of federal agents have had on the city.

Dana Loesch, a conservative radio and TV host, wrote on X on Sunday, “Yes, you absolutely can carry at a protest. Anyone who tells you otherwise is an anti-2A [Second Amendment] statist.” She added, however, that people “cannot interrupt a federal op while armed.”

And the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus took issue with Patel saying on Fox News on Sunday, “You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple. You don’t have that right to break the law.”

“This is completely incorrect on Minnesota law. There is no prohibition on a permit holder carrying a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines at a protest or rally in Minnesota,” the caucus wrote on X.

Asked about the concerns of gun-rights advocates, the White House referred NBC News to remarks made by Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino in a Sunday-morning interview with CNN.

“We respect Second Amendment rights, but those rights don’t count when you riot and assault, delay, obstruct and impede law enforcement officers,” Bovino said.

The debate has seemingly created a nascent set of progressive defenders of gun rights.

“I never thought Donald Trump and Stephen Miller would be the ones to finally force me into being a defender of the 2nd Amendment,” liberal commentator Mehdi Hasan wrote of the president and the White House deputy chief of staff in a post to X.

The instantaneous political realignment — which may be temporary — comes as polls show that the public has become less enamored of Trump’s mass-deportation campaign and of the federal agencies carrying it out with force in American cities. The shooting of an American citizen, captured on video from several angles, acted as a flashpoint for a larger debate over whether there are, or should be, any limits on the administration’s power to execute Trump’s agenda.

“It can’t be the case that exercising a right protected by the U.S. Constitution exposes you to killing or arrest,” said Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer who served as a Justice Department official in the Nixon and Reagan administrations and has criticized their successors. “It’s obvious that this is vast government overreach. It’s not just killing. They also go into homes without proper warrants.”

It remains to be seen whether Trump or any other Republican can patch up the schism between those who prioritize enforcing immigration law over gun rights and those who believe there is little, if anything, that is worth eroding the Second Amendment for.

For generations, the Second Amendment has been at the heart of Republican warnings about giving too much power to the federal government: Without it, many on the right argue, a Democratic president would seize Americans’ guns as a first step toward totalitarianism.

“It doesn’t matter to them that the semi-auto ban gives jack-booted government thugs more power to take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us,” Wayne LaPierre, then the executive director of the NRA, wrote in a fundraising letter following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Charlie Kirk, the late co-founder of the young conservative group Turning Point USA who was killed by an assassin’s bullet last year, explained his view in similar terms in 2023: “The Second Amendment is not about hunting. I love hunting. The Second Amendment is not even about personal defense. That is important. The Second Amendment is there, God forbid, so that you can defend yourself against a tyrannical government.”

Even Noem has articulated that point of view in the past, telling an NRA conference in 2023 that “Joe Biden and the liberals want our guns” because “it will make it easier for them to infringe on all of our other rights.” Additionally, the first law Noem signed when she was governor of South Dakota allowed residents of that state to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

Conversely, Democrats have fought for just as long — in state legislatures, Congress and federal courts — to impose restrictions on firearms, who can own them and where they can be carried. These limitations, major gun-control groups and many Democratic lawmakers contend, protect the public. In 2020, liberals excoriated conservatives for celebrating Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager who shot and killed two people during demonstrations against police violence in Wisconsin. Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges against him.

After his acquittal, Trump met with Rittenhouse, calling him a “nice young man” and defending his decision to shoot.

And yet on Saturday, as some shared memes of Rittenhouse to accuse Republicans of hypocrisy, progressives found themselves promoting the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms.

“For years I quietly mocked 2A defenders who argued arms were necessary to defend American rights against a tyrannical government,” former Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., wrote on X. “Today I apologize, because I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

Fein, the constitutional lawyer, said that Pretti’s shooting, and the administration’s defense of it, are even at odds with the arguments the Justice Department is making in favor of gun rights at the Supreme Court right now.

“The hypocrisy has reached an incredible level,” he said.

Marc Chagall once commented if he wasn’t Jewish, he might not have been an artist. His faith profoundly influenced his works like “The Praying Jew,” for example, as well as a never-before-seen work that Chagall gave to his granddaughter, Bella Meyer.

“He tells the story of Shabbat, from back of his memories,” Meyer said of the drawing.

She recalled watching her grandfather work: “I watched him paint, and I loved it. I adored him.”

But her grandfather’s faith also got him in trouble. In Russia where he was born, Chagall was jailed for not having his Jewish residency papers. He later moved to Paris. “France, for him, meant freedom,” said Meyer – freedom, that is, until the Nazis marched into Paris in 1940.

“For him he was French, rather than Jew,” Meyer said.

The Nazis didn’t see it that way. They considered Chagall’s work “degenerate art.” In 1941, the Vichy police tracked him down in Marseilles in the south of France and detained him yet again. Had it not been for the courage of strangers – non-Jews mostly, who risked their own lives to help smuggle him and his paintings to safety – that might have been the last we ever heard about Marc Chagall.

Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, has a name for such rescuers: The Righteous Among the Nations. There weren’t that many righteous rescuers, however; it’s easier to discount horror with blind eyes than it is with eyes wide open. Compared to six million murdered Jews, there are fewer than 30,000 non-Jews who have been recognized for helping. 

Using taped and transcribed interviews from the U.S. Holocaust Museum, filmmaker Nick Davis brought 45 extraordinary stories of those non-Jews who did help to life.

“One of them said, you know, he didn’t care whether they were Jewish or Catholic or Eskimos; they were persecuted people, and you had to help,” Davis said.

His film is called “This Ordinary Thing.”

“We have paid enough attention to the bad guys – Hitler, Himmler, Göring – and we don’t think as much about the good people who helped.” – Tina Strobos, The Netherlands

“On a sort of superficial level, I felt like, ‘Ugh, haven’t we seen enough Holocaust films?'” Davis said. “But when I looked at the stories that we were going to be telling, real goodness is what you do when no one’s looking.”

Oscar-winner Hellen Mirren voices the sacrifices of Irene Gut Opdyke, of Poland, who was forced to become the mistress of an elderly SS officer to buy his silence after he discovered that she was hiding Jews in his villa.

“I won’t tell you it was easy. Not only because he was an old man, but I knew there were 12 lives depending on me … I never talked about what I did during the war. And I still wouldn’t, had I not read that article in the newspaper that said the Holocaust didn’t happen.” – Irene Gut Opdyke

Alex and Mela Roslan sheltered three Jewish brothers in Warsaw. They couldn’t call a doctor if things were bad for fear of being discovered. What happened with them, and far too many others, is dramatized by Jeremy Irons:

“He says, ‘I would feel better if you held me.’ I picked him up, and he died in my arms. We buried him in the basement sitting up, because someone told me that was the way to bury a Jew. ” – Alex Roslan, Poland

Dwork believes whatever the motivation of rescuers was, in the case of the Holocaust, the end often justified the means.

I asked, “So, there really isn’t necessarily a line that connects them all, other than the fact that they must’ve had good souls?”

“Sometimes they didn’t even have good souls!” said Dwork. “Sometimes greed motivated them. And I say three cheers for greed, because it was thanks to the greed that they put their lives at risk, or put themselves in harm’s way.”

Her latest book, “Saints and Liars: The Story of Americans Who Saved Refugees from the Nazis” (W.W. Norton), is about American relief workers who helped save Jewish refugees. Most of the Americans you’ve likely never heard of. “Think about it: The best known of the Americans is Varian Fry, and very few people know about him,” she said.

Varian Fry brings us full circle, for he was the man who helped organize Marc Chagall’s escape from France. He was the first American to be given the title of The Righteous Among the Nations. His son, James, accepted the honor on his dad’s behalf.

Asked why he thinks his father wasn’t recognized more, James Fry replied, “I think the country wanted to move on, and focus on rebuilding, getting life back to normal. People didn’t want to remember, I guess.”

Varian Fry rarely talked about his time during the war, although Chagall paintings sometimes mysteriously appeared in the Fry household, presumably as a thank-you.

In retrospect, James says his dad suffered from outsized bouts of righteous indignation, to the point he believes his dad’s bravery may have sprung in part from his being bi-polar. “I think he harnessed sort of his manic energy to do something that most people would’ve thought not worth trying,” he said.

And it’s that – the not worth trying part – that haunts any discussion of these Righteous Among the Nations. What would you do?

Nick Davis said, “I have a wife and two amazing daughters, and I don’t know that I would risk their lives for a perfect stranger. Let me correct that: I know I wouldn’t risk their lives for a perfect stranger.”

Bella Meyer said, “I wish I would have the courage to do even a little ounce of it.”

We’ll never know how many there were – those hiding Jews in attics or basements or crawlspaces rarely survived their generosity. But those who did, did more than save a life; they created opportunities for life, and art, and beauty for years to come.

Asked what she would say to Varian Fry if she could have a conversation with him now, Chagall’s granddaughter replied, “I would just hug him, and thank him for existing.”

To watch a trailer for “This Ordinary Thing” click on the video player below:

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Story produced by Amiel Weisfogel. Editor: Steven Tyler.

      
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