President Donald Trump questioned why 37-year-old Alex Pretti was carrying a gun when he was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis.Trump told reporters on Tuesday said that he didn’t believe Pretti was an “assassin” but questioned why he was armed.“You can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns. You can’t do that. It’s just a very unfortunate thing,” he said. At an event in Iowa on the same day, Trump reiterated that the shooting was “very unfortunate” but that, “I don’t like that he had a gun.”His administration has long advocated for a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment. The January 24 shooting that killed Pretti happened weeks after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in the same city.Pretti was carrying a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun at the time of the incident, according to DHS.Videos of the shooting did not show Pretti wielding a gun in the moments before he was shot. He was shown holding his phone up to record law enforcement, which is protected under the First Amendment.A witness also didn’t see Pretti brandish the gun in front of law enforcement, according to a sworn statement filed in federal court. Minnesota law allows those with permits to carry guns in public and does not require them to be concealed.Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said Pretti was “exercising his First Amendment rights to record law enforcement activity and also exercising his Second Amendment rights to lawfully be armed in a public space in the city.”Some in Trump’s administration defended the agent, describing Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” who intended to kill law enforcement. Pretti’s family released a statement saying that was a lie and calling such comments “reprehensible and disgusting.”In an interview published in The Wall Street Journal on Jan. 25, Trump said he “(doesn’t) like any shooting.””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,” Trump said. “That doesn’t play good either.”
Can 2ndAmendment be repealed?
Yes, the constitutional amendment can be repealed. Any proposed amendment to the Constitution required passage by both the House and the Senate with two-thirds majorities, and then needed ratification by three-fourths of the 50 states, or 38 of them. The “arduous process has winnowed out all but a handful of the amendments proposed over the past 230 years,” Ron Elving, senior editor and correspondent on the Washington Desk for NPR News, wrote earlier this month. “Even relatively popular ideas with a big head of steam can hit the wall of the amendment process. How much more challenging would it be to tackle individual gun ownership in a country where so many citizens own guns — and care passionately about their right to do so?” Elving wrote. He pointed out the “tremendous support” gun ownership had in large parts of the nation, especially the South, West and Midwest, “which would easily total up to more than enough states to block a gun control amendment.” A second option for repealing an amendment was to hold a Constitutional Convention. In that case, two-thirds of state legislatures needed to call for such a convention, and states wrote amendments that then needed ratification by three-fourths of the states.
