One of my predictions is that we're going to see a violent couple of years.
The other is that within a year and a half the editorial pages of the American Rifleman, who fawned over Trump, will be decrying a GOP embrace of gun control. Fans of radicals who proclaim themselves to be for democracy and freedom while ranting about others as enemies should here to study history.
Gun control came in to the USSR with the Communists, after they'd secured power at the barrel of a gun. It was the Irish Republicans who brought gun control into Ireland, after the republic had been won with guns. People like to claim the Nazis brought gun control to Germany (they didn't), but those who like to yell that should recall that Hitler was elected into office as part of a populist movement that promised to fix the economy and which hated "others", so to speak.
As soon as Trump sees the populace as the enemy to his safety, he'll act to preserve himself. It's not, after all, as if he's been competing at Camp Perry and he doesn't need anyone's vote in four years. If he acts, what are those who supported him on this issue going to do, join the Democrats?
Yeoman, January 6, 2025.
Alex Pretti, who was shot down by the Border Patrol, with Border Patrol shooting ten rounds.1
I'm seeing one of my predictions about the Second Trump Administration coming true.
Everyone should have seen it.
Of the many people I know who voted for Donald Trump, there were three groups of what I'd call "single issue" voters who voted for him on the solid belief that he shared their views on one single issue, and that overrode everything else. There are: 1) opponents of abortion2 , 2) opponents of gun control, 3) opponents of wars overseas ("forever wars").3
Trumps betrayed you, if you are in one of these categories, on all three.
The betrayal on gun control is simply epic.
A few days ago the Border Patrol gunned down Alex Pretti. They actually shot ten shots. People will defend the Border Patrol on this, but it's indefensible. He was carrying a handgun legally, and it had been removed from him before he was killed.4
For decades the NRA insisted that Americans, and indeed everyone everywhere, had an absolute right to carry a firearm anywhere and campaigned for the right to carry, concealed and unconcealed, everywhere.5 Pretti had availed himself of that right. He was going absolutely nothing illegal at the time he was gunned down.
The Administration's reaction has been to make every left wing gun control argument you've ever heard.
I don't know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.
Kash Patel. Well, Kash, don't come to Wyoming then. There aren't any, and I mean any, largescale demonstrations were people aren't carrying, concealed and unconcealed. Shoot, I saw a guy with a M1 Garand and fixed bayonet a couple of years ago.
Patel tried to claim that Pretti was breaking the law by carrying a sidearm at a protest, apparently ignoring that this guy became a hero for something like that:
Minneapolis police officials, at any rate, quickly disabused that notion, noting in the press and on Face the Nation that this simply isn't true. Pretti wasn't breaking the law.
That same comment was made House Majority Leader Steve Scalise who was flat out confronted by Margaret Brennan on the same topic on Face the Nation. Scalise stumpbed all over himself and said he was for the Second Amendment had had sponsored a concealed carry law down in Louisiana, but that if you are carrying a gun while breaking the law it's a felony, and Pretti was breaking the law.
Pretti wasn't breaking the law, but it does give you a pretty good idea of what the former Republican Party, now the Fascist Party, thinks of the 1st Amendment as well as the 2nd.
The ever nervous Scott Bessent had to appear on Meet the Press.
KARL: He was an ICU use who worked for the VA and there's no evidence he brandished the gun whatsoever
BESSENT: But he brought a gun
KARL: I mean, we do have a Second Amendment
BESSENT: I've been to a protest -- guess what? I didn't bring a gun. I brought a billboard
The always nervous Scott Bessent.6
Bessent has been to a protest? Was it a super megabucks soybean protest?
Same thing here. Now bringing a gun to a protest marks you for death.
Kristi Noem, whose thugs committed the killing, really went after Pretti, calling him a domestic terrorist. That is now the official line for any of these protestors, they're terrorists. Neom sated:
I don't know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.
Noem falsely accused Pretti of brandishing the weapon.
Stephen Miller called Pretti "an assassin" and accused him of trying to murder Federal agents.
J. D. Vance repeated that lie, and Gregory Bovino more or less did. Only Trump, who was initially claimed to have said something falsely, apparently hasn't.
Ironically, it was the press and the police that were defending Second Amendment rights to carry the past couple of days. You shouldn't bring a gun to a protest. Pretti's handgun, which is a fairly typical 9mm SIG, was a "military weapon" (it is, but just about any semi automatic handgun could be), he had "multiple magazines".
And finally, we have the Dear Leader himself:
I don’t like any shooting. I don’t like it. 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.
Donald Trump.7
Basically, the Administration's position is that if you are carrying a handgun, the Federal Government can gun you down.
All things right out of the left wing gun control handbook.
The very thing, I"d note, that the NRA warned us about, in regard to the Federal Government, with the irony being it comes right from the man they backed.
Not that any of this should be a surprise. I've never felt for a moment that Trump had any actually affinity for firearms or was a member of "gun culture".8 He's a salesman, and he sold gun owners a line of bull.
Now they know better. But it will be too late.
The things is, however, the accomplishments on the Second Amendment have been made. They can be taken away. Therefore, a real "fool me once" thing is at play here. A lot of gun owners are going to keep backing Trump as they'll refuse to think on this.
And that's why support for Trump will prove to be too late. W.E.B. Dubois declared that "only a fool never changes his mind". How many gun owners will choose to be fools?
Footnotes:
1. The large number of shots suggest that the Border Patrol falls into the keep shooting category of policing, which many large city police do as well.
I'm not a fan of magazine capacity laws, but I"m at the point where I don't think most policemen of any type should carry a firearm at all, and that when they do, it's time to go back to .38 revolvers. They're simply less likely to kill people if they are med in that fashion
2. A lot of people who find this to be a deep moral issue, and I do see it that way, voted for Trump on the false belief that they had no other choice. There were other choices.
Now Trump is urging his supporters to soften their opposition to abortion. Mitch McConnel gets credit for the conservative judiciary that Trump put in place, which issued the Dodds decision, but there would be no real strong reason to feel that Trump cares much about the issue himself.
Trump's own sexual history is immoral, and usually multiple partners indicates a casual attitude towards abortion. There's nothing to indicate that any of Trump's tarts had one, but he has shifted his position, and its still shifting, over the years.
3. Trump really likes to brand himself as a peace president but there are no wars that the US was involved in when he took office that we are now out of, the only real lingering one being the war in Syria. He's started a new conflict in Venezuela, conducted a largescale mixed result raid in Iran, and appears to about to hit Iran again.
4. Pretti's parents said that they knew he had a permit, but didn't know him to actually carry. I'm in the same category.
My reaction is probably a lot like a lot of people in Pretty's category. I'm going to start carrying.
5. A spokesman from the NRA initially defended the shooting, slightly, and then the organization, waking up to the fact that it's about to be dumped by its members (it's already in financial trouble) backtracked and came out supporting carrying, but in a very muted fashion.
6. Bessent is another figure who doesn't square with what MAGA claims its view of the world is. He's an open homosexual in a homosexual union, something that MAGAs declare as abhorrent and which they repeatedly sneered at Biden's Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for. It's been interesting that Buttigieg and Jean-Pierre were condemned for the very same thing that Bessent does at home, the point being that like a lot of members of fascist movements, MAGA adherents will suspend all of their supposedly deeply held beliefs to follow the leader.
7. The two magazine thing is a real left wing talking point.
Use of the terms "very powerful" and "bullets" in place of cartridges almost always demonstrates firearms ignorance. 9mm pistols are not "very powerful". Quite the contrary. That's why some police forces simply blaze away with them, and why soldiers are taught to shoot an opponent more than once. The 9mm should be a good police round for that very reason as its unlikely to kill anyone with a single shot.
8. I'll have to get into gun culture, which I use as a positive expression, not a negative one, elsewhere, but I've never trusted anyone in the Second Amendment movement who wasn't an active member of a shooting sport, if even only a collector. While Eric Trump is a hunter, Donald Trump's only outside interest seems to be the incredibly boring sport of golf. If you can shoot, you wouldn't send much time on the golf course.
Wayne LaPierre, the former head of the NRA, struck me that way also, but I don't really know much about him. Chuck Gray in Wyoming strikes me that way also, although I could of course be wrong.
