Idaho gun-rights backers, defense lawyers voice worries about Minnesota shooting

BOISE, Idaho — The reactions of Idaho lawmakers, lawyers and gun-rights activists to the killing of a Minnesota protester run the gamut.

Some justify federal agents’ shooting of protester Alex Pretti, arguing that he put himself at risk because he had a gun. Others push back on that idea — which some officials in President Donald Trump’s administration have promoted — and are adamant that such a narrative contradicts Second Amendment rights.

A top Border Patrol official leading the agency’s crackdown in Minnesota said Saturday that Pretti, 37, “had two loaded magazines” and apparently aimed to inflict “maximum damage and massacre law enforcement,” The New York Times reported. A U.S. attorney in California posted on X that “if you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.”

Video footage of Pretti’s shooting shows that he approached law enforcement officers holding a phone in one hand and nothing in the other. Agents pinned him to the ground, and moments later yelled that he had a gun, indicating that they may not have known he was armed until he was on the ground, the Times found.

In conversations with state lawmakers who have been outspoken on gun rights, and with two Idaho attorneys who focus on constitutional rights, the Idaho Statesman heard a range of reactions to Pretti’s shooting.

Rep. Ted Hill, R-Eagle, has argued for public-school teachers to carry concealed weapons to intervene in school shooting events. He regularly carries a gun with him, he told the Statesman.

He called Pretti’s killing “bad” and “very unfortunate.” But Pretti put himself at risk, he argued, by confronting police while he was armed.

“I think the circumstance for him is, he got into a hassle with the police with a firearm on — that’s a problem,” Hill said. “It’s a real problem, because they don’t know what his objectives are, and they see this gun, and they’re trying to wrestle him down, and they’re gonna go ‘gun.’”

“That’s what created this whole thing,” Hill added. “If he wasn’t carrying a gun, he wouldn’t have been shot.”

Other lawmakers hesitated to draw conclusions about Pretti’s case, saying they didn’t know all the facts.

Sen. Todd Lakey, R-Nampa, said Americans could bring guns to public gatherings under the Second Amendment, but it depends on what they do with the firearm. He cautioned that he didn’t know the facts and circumstances and hadn’t seen what Trump administration officials said about the shooting.

“Law enforcement has to have the ability to defend themselves in their law enforcement activities,” Lakey told the Statesman. Lakey in 2020 sponsored a bill to allow for concealed carry of guns in Idaho schools.

Sen. Dan Foreman, R-Moscow, told the Statesman that it is “always tragic when someone loses his or her life,” but he wasn’t there and didn’t know the details of what happened. Foreman in 2023 sponsored a bill to eliminate public universities’ authority to regulate guns on campus.

Language used by Trump administration officials has prompted pushback from gun-rights advocates: The National Rifle Association on Saturday called the U.S. attorney’s statement “dangerous and wrong.” The Idaho Second Amendment Alliance reposted one advocate’s statement on X that said, “We have the right to carry firearms. It’s the violent actions of a person that may justify a lethal response.”

“There is no carte blanche to shoot Americans for exercising their rights,” the post says.

Greg Pruett, the president of the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance, did not respond to requests for comment.

Idaho lawyer asks: What did officers know when they shot Pretti?

Kate Enterkine, a Boise criminal defense attorney and former Ada County public defender, told the Statesman that questions about whether Pretti was legally carrying a weapon at the Minneapolis protest were somewhat beside the point. (Pretti had a permit to carry a gun, Minneapolis’ police chief said.)

More relevant, she said, would be questions about what Pretti was doing with the gun – whether he was holding it or reaching for it during his interactions with agents.

“It’s going to be viewed from the perspective of the ICE officer as to whether they had a justification” for shooting Pretti, she said. “Assuming someone had disarmed him, which is what it really appears happened, whether they announced that, (and) what was that notification or information to the other officers? Because you’re going to want to know what those officers knew at that time.”

Enterkine emphasized that she had seen only the footage of the shooting available online, and that she did not have complete information about the events leading up to the shooting. But from what she can see, she said, his killing was “not in line with any police shooting I’ve seen anytime recently.”

“I have a hard time believing that any local law enforcement agency here would have pulled the trigger,” she said. “What we saw occur on that block is vastly outside the norm of policing agencies, vastly outside the norm of historical ICE operations or behaviors, and that this is not normal and not in line with normal or expected law enforcement interactions.”

Boise lawyer: Gun possession doesn’t justify killing protester

Karin Sowieja, an attorney with a Boise law firm focused on defending Idahoans’ constitutional rights, said that using Pretti’s possession of a gun to justify his killing was “disingenuous” and “a complete farce.”

“Simply being in lawful possession of a gun, at a protest much less, is not an excuse for using force against a civilian,” she told the Statesman in an email. “In fact, many responsible, gun-loving Idahoans would argue that concealed carry is an absolute constitutional right — to which I would agree.”

“What happened was wrong, and officials on the right need to acknowledge that. Were ICE officers overwhelmed by the number of aggressive protestors and agitators? Absolutely. And should properly trained, local police officers been allowed to assist with crowd control? Absolutely,” she wrote. “But if deadly force is to be used, an officer must feel as though their life is legitimately at risk.”

The Boise area hasn’t seen the kind of ICE activity present in Minneapolis. But immigration enforcement has ticked up in the state, and agents have changed their tactics.

ICE agents have smashed car windows, conducted more arrests at routine ICE check-ins and pushed for the mandatory detention of immigrants, according to previous Statesman reporting. In at least one instance, ICE waited at the Boise airport to pick someone up. In October, FBI, ICE and other federal agencies raided a horse race and arrested over 100 immigrants, at least three of whom were lawfully in the U.S.

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