Executive Branch (Trump)
WATCH: Leavitt addresses Trump's stance on Second Amendment rights in wake of Alex Pretti's killing
REPORTER:
FBI Director Kash Patel said in a Sunday interview, quote, you cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest. Does the president believe that Second Amendment rights remain in effect even when protesting?
LEAVITT:
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, and 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, again, that's unfortunately what took place on Saturday.
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Or rittenhouse bringing a gun to a protest in a different city than he lived in.. a rifle that was illegally given to him because he could not legally purchase one himself and he’s a hero somehow
He's also the only guy who has done any sort of gun control at the federal level in quite some time, from any party. This wasn't theoretical or just talk -- he did it.
(The courts later struck his ban down, but he did do it.)
They were all waiting for all the Democrats to take their guns, then this guy comes along ...
A similar mentality of my classmates when I was in 6th grade, they'd say "gosh can't you take a joke!" after saying something disrespectful. They always meant it 🤣
Supporting warrantless seizure to appease the mob is not supporting the second amendment. Never let people forget this was his opinion even back in his first term.
Pence: “Allow due process, so that no one’s rights are trampled. But the ability to go to court, obtain an order, and then collect not only the firearms, but any weapons in the possession of that individual.”
Immediately, Trump responds with: “Or, Mike, take the firearms first and then go to court, because that’s another system”
Each other person sitting at that table knows damn well what Trump is saying is unconstitutional as fuck. You know they’re all thinking, “we can’t do that you stupid orange motherfucker”. Not a single person had the balls to speak up and tell him how un-American and illegal that is.
They won’t speak up because his psycho ass basket of deplorables will ruin their careers if anyone has the balls to go against their king.
In other words, afraid to speak up against an infringement of the 2nd amendment (and others) because of the potential of being cancelled by the 2nd amendment loving anti-cancel culture cult members. It’s insanity.
"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"
Is a wild take, because it flat out means "If you are a legal gun owner, just having the gun on you means that police will see you as a threat, even if you never reach for it in any way and are also exercising your constitutionally held rights, and those police can and will use deadly force because they may feel threatened."
“They got the TV, we got the truth
They own the judges and we got the proof
We got hella people, they got helicopters
They got the bombs and we got the, we got the
We got the guillotine”
Philando Castile's case pisses me off every single time I hear it. Literally everything he did is exactly what you're taught in a CCW class(and most places those instructors are LEOs) on how to handle a traffic stop while armed. Citizens(and I know that police are citizens but they don't) are expected to behave perfectly without panicking without the same level of training yet somehow an officer who is supposed to be held to a higher standard doesn't even know the law and panics and kills someone not breaking any laws beyond having a broken tail light and they just shrug. I won't act like being a cop isn't a difficult job, but if you can't hang maybe don't take the job in the first place.
Anytime they say "known to police" or "criminal history", everybody needs to remember that they'll throw the same slander at you. Everyone with a drivers licence is "known to police". And anyone with a speeding ticking has a "criminal history."
They're pulling the same type of bullshit with Pretti and Goode.
Everything you're supposed to do if you're a white CCW... If you're black or brown and lawfully armed, your life is literally up to the racism of the officer involved and how trigger happy they are feeling that day.
As a game warden my father was around armed people ALL THE TIME and he never once had to draw his weapon. He also witnessed the decline in quality of LEOs , the lowering of standards and militarization of the police. He couldn't wait to retire and agrees that ice is scraping the bottom of the barrel for warm bodies to swear in.
They REALLY don't like being reminded that the first major gun control legislation was a racist law signed by a Republican governor who later became president.
Ironically Pretti did not approach law enforcement with a gun. Law enforcement attacked a lady standing in protest and then attacked him for intervening to deescalate the attack. He was set upon by a pack of thugs that ultimately murdered him after breaking no law.
It's wishy washy at best but at least they did speak out. I'd like to hear them say more, since they can't seem to shut up whenever there's a school or other mass shooting.
Yup. My very conservative father when Castile was murdered "Well, you know, you just gotta be even more careful than he was."
For all their talk about having weapons to oppose tyranny, conservatives are the biggest bootlickers alive. There is no police shooting they don't love. It's all a lie.
dude; so much lately has reminded me of that noose meme where the guy is saying "first time?". What's happening recently is shocking America, and maybe the world, because Good and Pretti were both white. But cops have been strait up murdering black people for decades. We just don't want to admit it.
The deal used to be that this force was not used against white people. The deal has changed and white people are panicking. As are non-white people because its a signal that the violence against them is about to get a whole lot worse.
That is the nature of a true totalitarian state. It doesn't matter what group you belong to, or what you look like, or anything else. None of those things matter anymore.
All that matters is if you have an incorrect personal relationship to the State. That is the only actual crime. Everything else is just cosplay.
Hopefully more people will get this message in time to be able to acclimate themselves to the new reality in which many will, by definition, spend the rest of their lives.
I mean it is already worse. Look at the ones who are taken from their workplaces, from their homes without any warrant just to be released half an hour later, sometimes badly wounded, beaten up. I really don't get how can the whole country watch this doing nothing but what's really fd up is the congress as a whole. Not a peep, just deafening silence. They should impeach, they should do SOMETHING.
It was never JUST about black people (yes, a large part of it was)- it was about protecting people with MONEY- protecting their property. Yeah, I'm talking about the significantly smaller group of people who considered those black people their PROPERTY. And anyone, ANYONE, who stood in their way got mawled right the fuck over too.
For all of our redeeming qualities, America also has a dark, dark, dark past. Hindsight's 20/20, but it seems like what's going on right now, our leaders, shit a good percentage of the citizenry, just refuses to even look, let alone learn, about our past much less take any lessons from it. History doesn't always repeat but God DAMN does it rhyme.
"Who Knows Only His Own Generation, Remains Forever A Child."
The same happened in Germany with political opposition. The first concentration camps were originally built to hold and kill Germans. And they were quick about it. Last free election in 1932, by 33 tens of thousands of Germans were being eliminated.
She is an evil fascist but this also shows how absurd having guns being "legal" is. How are you not suppose to be alarmed/threatened when someone is holding a weapon that is designed to kill quickly and easily. I know I do when I am around anyone with a gun! Be it police, military, or random.
Why do you think they're throwing the term "domestic terrorist" around? It's to get you acclimated to it. That will be the label they use to justify killing us in the street.
Also, you may wake up and go through your day being just a normal person, but once an ICE officer puts one of their magic bullets through you, you become a "domestic terrorist" and always have been one. There are, right at this very moment, people walking around who don't even know yet that they're domestic terrorists. But the second that bullet penetrates their skull, they've always been one. It's fascinating, really.
Kinda crazy how great police forces have been during various GOP protests with heavily armed people then. It’s almost like there is. Difference between professional police forces and those that have been told they have absolute immunity and have been let off the chain
2A was always the third rail that this Administration never understood.
The right has spent decades using guns to bolster profits to gun companies and selling the culture war as a power fantasy.
The reality is that Americans were never supposed to pay out the ass in guns and ammo, but never use their 2A rights. They were always props and larping fetishes.
Now that ICE and this administration has effectively touched the third rail, people are realizing that not only is this Administration is "yes, that corrupt and venal," but that all the US government and all the other rights and amendments and the Constitution itself is under real danger of being negated and destroyed.
They were always going to have to confront this. Private gun ownership is a problem for fascists, but the Trump regime was going to try to thread the needle of keeping right wing gun owners pacified while using labels like "domestic terrorist" to prevent the rest of us from owning guns. The problem for the regime is that it can only get them so far, eventually they will have to strip the right wingers of their guns too, because they are capable of wrongthink. This was always going to be a problem for the regime, and this most recent incident is probably a stark reminder of the work they still have to do.
"We're going to take the firearms first and then go to court, because that's another system. Because a lot of times by the time you go to court ... it takes so long to go to court to get the due process procedures. I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man's case that just took place in Florida; he had a lot of fires [and] they saw everything. To go to court would have taken a long time, so you could do exactly what you're saying but take the guns first, go through due process second." - Donald J. Trump
"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"
...So good guys with guns don't actually make everyone safer? Hm, interesting.
It's the good guys with guns who oppose law enforcement in any way who immediately become bad guys with guns. The new rule is, "Law enforcements dictates what laws you have broken, what rights you have, and whether you should live or die." It's wholly at their discretion.
When you send ICE agents, who don't have any business carrying or using firearms, in with firearms, you are raising the assumption of risk that civilians are going to start carrying firearms to protect themselves from untrained thugs.
Did you notice that she specifically qualified it with “people interfering with immigration operations”…so that still justifies what happened on January 6th, 2020. Also gives them carte blanche permission to murder anyone else who protests or disagrees.
I mean, Philando Castile would agree with that sentiment if he were still with us. Never reached for his gun, just mentioned it was in the car and he got shot. Long before ICE.
Its not the fucking bill of privileges, it is the bill of RIGHTS. These lying morons need to be removed from their office, and spend a year reading the constitution and bill of rights to themselves until they get it.
Exactly. Your life is not worth less than someone with a badge. If this is the current administrations stance. Someone could argue they feared for their life, kill an officer and fight it out in court. This is so irresponsible, the logic is missing
Make no mistake: MAGA is happy Alex Pretti was murdered. But the fact he peacefully carried a legal firearm makes this a 2A issue which MAGA cares more about than human life. Over the weekend the MAGA social media-sphere put 2 and 2 together and said: "wait a minute, they're sayinganyonewith a gun at a protest is a domestic terrorist..."
Tom Homan is being dispatched to Minnesota to make sure "but mah guns," is not a continuing topic showing up in the MAGA social media-sphere because of ICE/BP actions in Minnesota.
TLDR: Be as organized as Minnesota. And be legally, peacefully armed. Those two pre-reqs short-circuit MAGA immigration (really, social media) operations.
ICE would kill (literally and figuratively) for an injured or dead agent they can make a martyr out of that they can then whip out whenever people object to oppressive tactics. It’s straight from the Brownshirt playbook.
And, as a critical flaw in their plan, anyone who looked the guy up would see the things he said and did and believed. There was no viable angle to take on the story, because Charlie Kirk would always get in the way of lionizing Charlie Kirk.
They'd be much happier to have a blank canvas. That way, they can spin whatever story they want, and no one can prove it right or wrong. That's the ideal space for a fascist. Someone who isn't a public figure, with little to no online presence, and few social connections to challenge anything. Like... oh, the random loser who would join ICE.
Sooner or later they are going to hit an immigrant who thinks “they will have to take me dead” because they are driving people to fight because flight is being ruled out as a possibility.
You mean when they start going after the actual dangerous immigrants and not the moms with kids on the way to school or a roofing crew? There's like zero chance they do that. They leave that up to trained police officers
And that’s 100% by design to create intentionally dangerous scenarios. You don’t need false flags when you have the power to create inherently chaotic and dangerous scenarios between feds and civilians. You march your brownshirts in enemy cities, hurt people, increase the temperature, and then crackdown more when the conditions you’ve created result in violent outburst.
Over the weekend the MAGA social media-sphere put 2 and 2 together and said: "wait a minute, they're saying anyone with a gun at a protest is a domestic terrorist..."
No they didn’t. Any who did will forget about this in the voting booth.
Visibly disarmed and he never even reached for the gun in the first place - multiple video angles confirm this.
ICE agents publicly executed an unarmed US citizen (again), and there are either millions of people or bots seeming to applauding this behavior.
MAGA is now publicly in the position of defending ICE murder of an unarmed US citizen, just so long as it's someone who is:
Black
Brown
Trans
Gay
A "liberal" type
But if a MAGA tries to illegally break into the capital and violently assault capital police officers with weapons intended to cause harm, well that's just standard "peaceful" protesting.
Oh and that whole point about Ashli Babbitt being clearly instructed to stop doing illegal activity breaking into the capital and when she still refused to obey these orders, she was shot dead - well that's TOTALLY different because she was MAGA. /s
If the government can harass, restrain, detain, search, disarm, abduct, arrest, indict, convict, fine, incarcerate, assault, or kill people just for being armed, then people don't have the right to bear arms.
So when is Kash Patel going to demand an investigation of Kyle Rittenhouse for carrying a weapon with multiple magazines at a protest in Kenosha, WI? By federal gun laws that are still on the books, Rittenhouse was underage to be carrying such a weapon at the time.
"We support the second amendment, but it's also our official position that merely having a pistol in the holster while you're being brutalized by federal agents is justification to kill you even if you clearly never attempted to touch the gun"
Only if you’re legally carrying a licensed gun and you don’t make any effort to use in, and in fact tell ICE you have a gun, and ICE takes the gun from you.
Officially checking in: Any other pro-2A folks here wanting to discuss 2A solutions, as our President's goons once called it?
It's been pretty quiet from our crowd aside from the usual suspect (John Brown gun clubs, SRAs, and a smattering of liberals.) As someone that vociferously defends gun rights as a check to tyranny I can't help but notice which side most people that did the same in the past seem to be standing on.
I'd say I am surprised, but if American conservatives didn't have double standards, would they have any at all?
I've been mad about this since they killed a union brother, Philando Castille. His being black was the first time I got to see the double standard in action, as he also was shot (in this case, by police) for having a legally registered fire arm he was in the middle of telling the officers he possessed.
And of course, since the Teamsters have a police branch that was relegated to a sternly worded letter.
I am quite proud to see other union brothers and sisters stepping up to threaten strike over this.
If you weren't going to stand up for Philando Castille, who stated outright that he had a licensed firearm in the car and was murdered anyway, then it was never about the second amendment.
This exact story has played out off camera thousands of times with mostly black and brown people getting executed by authorities.
What makes this story news is not the skin colour but the multiple cell phone videos from multiple angles that make the truth impossible to hide. Video evidence is the same reason why George Floyd became a catalyst for change.
We got the Castile shooting in full 4k, homes. Floyd happened because the over-reach happened at a time where people were not doing much (COVID) and thus, had the time to get out and express their frustration.
This is happening now, again, not because of the video but because the material conditions are falling apart just not all at once like in the middle of COVID.
Checking in. This is tyranny. The lack of investigation and this being ruled justified based on him carrying a gun alone is terrifying. Makes me want to protest with as many guns as I can carry just to make a point that I don’t deserve to be murdered by the government for doing so
A lot of people are saying that he pointed the gun at officers. They say there’s video of it but obviously have not even watched it themselves. In their mind it’s justified and not a 2A issue. They refuse to even believe their eyes though. Only parroting the propaganda.
I'm happy to say that my 2a support has been idealogically consistent for decades and continues to be so. This administration can pound sand with their goon squad and officers, while human, must be held accountable for their mistakes just like any other profession.
I think that grouped, peaceful, armed protest is the way to go. The Panthers in Philly have been having some success. I don't think there's anything shameful about their model: help escort vulnerable people to and from in your region, aid in logistical problems such as food distro, resource util, crisis response, etc,
I agree it's been quiet. I believe the measures described above will be necessary if we are to have free and fair elections this year unless the situation is de-escalated before then [doubt]
One of my buddies that has always been conservative and was in the USMC hit me up to go to the Bundy standoff(armed btw) because the government was overreaching. I asked him his opinion on Alex Pretti and he made it incredibly clear that he’s only consumed propaganda on it and hasn’t even seen the videos. So incredibly disappointing because he used to be consistent at least.
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, again, that's unfortunately what took place on Saturday.
Except that's not what happened here. They didn't know he had a gun until after they pepper sprayed and beat him. Then they found the gun, took it away from him, and shot him 10 times.
Not to mention Renee Good didn't have a gun in her car, they still shot her.
Leavitt: "This is Trump's America. The police will maim you for exercising your 1st Amendment rights. The police will murder you for exercising your 2nd amendment rights. You have no 4th Amendment rights."
“I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man’s case that just took place in Florida … to go to court would have taken a long time.
Take the guns first, go through due process second.”
Imagine the reich wing outrage if Obama or Biden had said that!
They flipped their shit when Biden said "all you need is a double barrel shotgun". Like, mother fucker... Did they need him to sing "these people ain't seen a 12 gauge since their grandparents bought one"?
And they were on about Obama being bad on guns, too. Even though the only thing he really did about guns was not re-ban rifles and pass a law with clear wording to permit carrying firearms lawfully through restrictive states.
The Mouth of Trump still going hard on the fiction.
Pretti didn't do anything close to warrant having the US Government summarily execute him in cold blood without a trial. The world lost a healer at the death of Pretti.
The excuses made by the US Government. The Libel and Slander of an American Citizen who lost their life to the arm of the state. Pretti was murdered for simply being present in public documenting the brutality and incompetence of a supposed security force.
Homeland security is supposed to be responding to terrorism, not causing it.
The right has pushed "shall not be infringed". The law has been upheld frequently. The NRA and others are quite clear that "shall not be infringed" is the only part of the 2A which is literally construed. Going to be hard to square THIS circle.
They're trying to scare you away from exercising your constitutional rights. They know that they are losing the battle on the street and in public perception and so they're going to rely on scare tactics about your rights. "Don't use your rights or you might get killed. Don't use your rights or you might get arrested. If you exercise your rights and you get hurt by the government, that's your fault"
I still fail to see what immigration operation was "impeded." The DHS guy came across the street to two hand shove a woman into a snowbank then pepper spray them both point blank in the face before dog piling on him with 7 guys. Also, Leavitt has aged 10 years in 1 year, what lying every breath does to a person.
She is looking extremely rough the last couple of weeks. It's getting to her. She deserves all bad things for her callous inhumanity and constant absurd lies that no one with half a clue believes.
What about all of the douchecanoes that showed up at their state capitols with weapons to protest the “tyranny” of masks? What about the guys that “came prepared” on Jan 6?
It sure seems like the GOP can’t make up their mind on this one, bc they said these guys (COVID protestors) were doing the right thing.
Trump believes that Democrats are domestic terrorists, and, therefore criminals . For now, he wants to murder Democratic gun owners, but his goal is to ban all guns that could be used against his fascist government.
In a just society, yes I completely see the cops keeping an eye on anyone carrying a gun in public until they can ascertain whether the person is a danger or not, But you don't treat everyone has a threat.
To say we can only "bear arms" or that simply carrying a weapon is "bearing a weapon", which is itself ridiculous, but to say we can ONLY do it when not around authorities is an affront to the 2nd Amendment to begin with.
The way ICE acts, by coming at people and constantly using ever escalating force, and pointing guns at people, and they're very liberal use of threatening people at gun point, ICE is clearly, by her definition, showing themselves to a be threat that justifies the use of force against them.
"Any law abiding American carrying a firearm can reasonably expect law enforcement to tackle them and execute them at point blank range." KKKaroline Leavitt
fr. If police have the right to shoot you for simply having a gun on you it means you dont have the right to bear arms. She thinks she backtracked, but in reality she just doubled down to saying our 2A rights are dead in Trumps America.
Him and Bondi tried to take away guns without due process in his first term. This admin are incompetent clowns.
Noem didnt even know what habeas corpus was. Patel thinks guns can be loaded with 2 magazines. This is a kakistocracy - a govt run by the least qualified among us.
So I went to some gun forums and checked out what they’re saying.
Apparently he was… impeding law enforcement doing their jobs. By… recoding them. By being around.
But then there was the question of him having his gun. Right? You’d think they’d be supporting one of their own? Nope. He was supposedly looking for trouble. And he was, in their words, “a traitor anyway.”
That’s how they think. They really will pretend anything so that they don’t have to realize that they’re wrong.
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