Gun rights are not Donald Trump's main issue. Like Ronald Reagan before him, Trump has had his slip-ups with gun rights supporters; his stance on "bump stocks" in his first administration, attempting to mollify moderates squeamish about a series of grisly mass shootings, lost him some of the juice he'd gotten with gun owners. . And like Reagan, Trump only spends so much political capital on the issue.
And like Reagan before him (at least during Reagan's presidency), gun rights have improved, not least because of the Supreme Court justices he pushed through that cinched the Bruen ruling, with potentially more on the horizon.
And let's be honest: Kash Patel has had a great first year with the FBI, seeing a 20% drop in the homicide rate and a doubling in arrests for violent crime - and missing, trafficked children are being found and returned home, and their traffickers put away for a long time:
The Department of Homeland Security has arrested over 7,000 illegal alien gang members including m*rderers, r*pists, kidnappers, and other serial criminals.#lawenforcement #news #ice #democratshttps://t.co/nzEJTTFaDc pic.twitter.com/DAVlXv7I2S
— Blue Lives Matter (@bluelivesmtr) January 23, 2026
With all that said? It was a rough weekend.
The shooting of Alex Pretti last Saturday by a federal officer in Minnapolis for the ICE illegal immgration crackdown led to a couple of slip-ups from Kash Patel and Dan Bovino:
After federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, who was very well armed, Patel said this:
“No one who wants to be peaceful shows up at a protest with a firearm that is loaded with two full magazines,” Patel said during an interview on FOX. “That is not a peaceful protest, and you do not get to touch law enforcement. You do that anywhere; this FBI is going to be leading the charge to arrest those.”
Respectfully, Director Patel, millions of law-abiding American gun owners strongly disagree. The Second Amendment guarantees our right to be armed—period—full stop. There is no “protest clause,” which cancels it out, or any ammunition limit. Even uber-liberal Minnesota allows private citizens with a concealed-carry permit to be armed, including at a protest.
I understand Director Patel may still be pumped full of negative emotion caused by what’s occurring almost hourly in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but the country’s gun owners aren’t responsible for any of the protests or the mayhem. And as for the magazines Pretti had with him, how many mags, sir, can law-abiding American gun owners carry?
While we still don't know the whole story of what happened last Saturday, you could almost hear America's handgun-carry community responding to Director Patel when he said a pistol and two magazines was evidence of ill intent "huh? Two magazines is pretty normal".
The administration is doing damage control with gun owners today:
.@PressSec: "@POTUS supports the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens—absolutely... while Americans have a constitutional right to bear Arms, Americans do not have a constitutional right to impede lawful immigration enforcement operations." pic.twitter.com/RUTna6A0e5
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) January 26, 2026
“The president supports the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens absolutely. There has been no greater supporter or defender of the right to bear arms than President Donald J. Trump. So while Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms, Americans do not have a constitutional right to impede lawful immigration enforcement operations. 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, and that’s unfortunately what took place on Saturday.”
Now's not the time to lose focus - or to forget to dance with the ones that brought you.
