Carrying Legal: When Rights Become Suspicion
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Spent some time this week following the Alex Pretti story out of Minneapolis. If you carry a permit in Idaho and you haven't read into this one, you should.
The basic facts: licensed carry, holstered, never drawn. Agents didn't even see the gun until after the tackle. That's the sequence. Keep that in mind as you read the official response.
"The Second Amendment protects Americans' right to bear arms while protesting—a right the federal government must not infringe upon."
— Gun Owners of America, responding to Essayli's commentsGOA putting that in print isn't surprising. What's worth noting is that the NRA called Essayli's statement "dangerous and wrong" — and those aren't words they typically reach for when the target is someone inside a Republican administration. When both organizations are saying the same thing in the same week, that's a signal worth reading.
President Trump stopped short of that, but told the Wall Street Journal he was troubled that Pretti showed up to a protest with a "fully loaded gun with two magazines."
A fully loaded gun with two magazines. That's my Tuesday carry. That's probably your Tuesday carry. The framing there isn't describing an anomaly — it's describing standard defensive carry, and treating it like an aggravating factor.
Here's what bothers me practically: Idaho has robust permit reciprocity and a strong permitless carry framework. Most of us around here have been operating under the assumption that legal carry means legal carry. This case suggests that at the federal enforcement level, the presence of a firearm — even holstered, even permitted, even never touched — can be worked into a post-hoc justification after the fact. That's a different environment than the one we've been told we're operating in.
The article closes with a line worth sitting with: that an administration can run a Second Amendment litigation project and still treat a holstered permit as probable cause. Both things are apparently true at the same time right now.
For those of you who carry at public events — county fairs, rallies, even just open carry at an outdoor market — has this story changed anything about how you think through your setup or your situational awareness when federal law enforcement might be present?
Read the full article in The Handbook → | By Steve Duskett
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