Gun rights advocates in the United States have come to a crossroad, and can no longer afford to walk the middle ground. Either they stand with their constitutional freedom to be armed, or they agree that by wearing a licensed weapon in public, they accept the inherent greater risk of death by ICE.
Advocates of Kentucky’s Wild West approach to carrying concealed weapons must in turn support the legal gun ownership of their fellow citizens or run the risk of losing both their First and Second Amendment rights. When a licensed gun owner is relieved of his weapon while being pistol whipped by a mass of masked federal agents before being shot multiple times in the back, the Second Amendment warriors should be ready to ride at dawn.
Instead, the ICE shooting death of U.S. veteran and ICU nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti last week has caused a larger debate about the purpose of his gun, which he had a permit to carry and did not draw. The president’s lackeys have called Pretti’s death an avoidable tragedy - assuming their agents hadn’t first pepper sprayed him as he tried to protect a female protester in distress, beat him, stripped him of his personal weapon, then filled his back with lead.
Watching ICE agents’ attack on a U.S. veteran holding nothing more dangerous than a camera begs the question who, exactly, was overcome with uncontrollable, violent anger and who, exactly, has the right to bear arms.
Blaming the disarmed victim for his own death is an easy way to absolve oneself of this constitutional dilemma. The White House has cast a wide curtain over the truth to hide their own culpability in Minnesota’s tide of federal overreach. Gun owners who both celebrate this right yet fault a U.S. veteran for doing the same are not the constitutional warriors they claim.
Our nation must either work diligently on common-sense gun reform or fight for Pretti’s Second Amendment right to bring his registered weapon to a peaceful, public protest. We cannot bridge both ideologies only to switch arguments as it suits us on social media.
As it stands, Kentucky law already seems poised to defend Pretti’s constitutional freedoms. One hardly has to linger around the local Wal-mart to see more than a dozen publicly armed individuals running errands in their hometowns. A 2019 Kentucky Health Issues Poll put Kentucky gun ownership at more than 54%, a figure still widely used today.
The commonwealth’s Castle Doctrine casts little doubt as to who the courts would favor should a Kentucky gun owner have in their possession their personal, licensed weapon during a public protest or while filming such protests from their vehicles. The Castle Doctrine states anyone in a dwelling or a vehicle has the right to use whatever means necessary to defend themselves, including deadly force. For example, should a masked and armed person try to remove an occupant from a vehicle, without that person having committed a crime, they (no citizenship required) might enjoy immunity from prosecution if using deadly force to prevent their unlawful removal. The key term here is “unlawful removal.”
The Kentucky ACLU wrote in 2020 that the law “justifies force by allowing Kentuckians to assume a person entering their home intends to harm or kill them. The law also relieves people of ‘duty of retreat,’ meaning there is no requirement to avoid conflict at all cost.”
This right to defend oneself was on the forefront of Federalist Noah Webster’s mind when he noted in 1787 that the right to bear arms would become crucial to protect America’s people from congressional tyranny.
“The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed,” he wrote. To this point, “A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitution; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.”
Kentuckians have a long history of defending their neighbors against armed agents seeking to turn us against one another or tear our communities apart: the British in the Revolutionary War, raiders and Confederate Brigadier General John Morgan in the Civil War, the militant Night Riders in the Black Patch Tobacco Wars.
When a tornado tore our communities asunder in 2021, strangers with chain saws became our neighbors. Prayer groups in work gloves made their way to each holler. Once again, we became the People our commonwealth needed.
When heavily armed federal agents begin knocking down our neighbors’ doors, dragging citizens from their vehicles or tear-gassing our children, gone are the days we can blame political divisiveness for our inaction.
We are a commonwealth of constitutional wildcats, and those colors don’t run. All that separates us now are those who support each Amendment equally, and those who cling to the Second Amendment only when it suits them.
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