The Lie That Got Alex Pretti Killed on a Minneapolis Street

[I]n Minnesota, if you have a permit, you can carry a firearm. That’s absolutely true. But every concealed carry instructor in this state will tell you the same thing. The moment you choose to carry a firearm, your responsibility goes up, not down. You don’t become more entitled to engage in confrontation, you actually become more obligated to avoid it. 

Here in Minnesota, we have what’s called a duty to retreat. Which means if a judge later decides after the fact that you could have reasonably avoided a conflict, even if you felt threatened at the time, you can still go to prison for using your firearm. That’s not theory. That’s the real law here in this state. And anyone who teaches carry knows it. 

So, the idea that a carry permit somehow entitles someone to walk into an active area of federal law enforcement, get into a physical confrontation with armed agents, and then claim, “Well, I had the right to be there.” That’s not how any of this works at all. If anything, being armed creates an elevated duty to stay away from such volatile situations because now by doing that, you’re introducing lethal force into the environment, you’re increasing the perceived threat to officers and you’re dramatically narrowing their reaction window. Now, that’s not politics, that’s physics. …

Carrying a gun does not give you license to approach law enforcement and interfere with their duties. Filming does not give you license to defy lawful orders. And neither of those activities creates immunity from the consequences when things predictably escalate. 

And this is where context matters. Was this a peaceful sidewalk interaction or was this the middle of an enforcement operation? And the answer is obvious. 

Was this passive observation from a distance or physical proximity and confrontation? Was Pretti retreating or advancing? Those questions shape the case, not your slogans.

And here’s what bothers me about the way this is being framed. It trains people to think that their rights are shields from consequences instead of responsibilities. It tells them, “Well, just invoke the magic words, gun rights, press rights, protest rights, and reality will bend around you.” 

But it doesn’t. Reality responds to your behavior. Law evaluates your choices and actions. And officers in the field don’t have the luxury of freeze-frame hindsight. What they see is distance, movement, compliance, resistance, threat posture. And you have 100% control over all of those factors. You choose whether to approach. You choose whether to comply. You choose whether to resist. And you choose the posture and temperament with which you engage. All of which is relevant to whether you are exercising your rights lawfully or committing multiple state and federal crimes. …

So the conversation becomes dishonest if it only asks did Pretti have the right to do X instead of asking, did Pretti act in a way that someone with those rights is expected to act under the law. Because rights without responsibility aren’t liberty. They’re license for chaos. And when chaos meets armed law enforcement, people are likely to die.

If you want to carry, you must avoid confrontation. If you want to film, you must avoid interference with lawful operations. If you want to protest, you must avoid impedement. Those aren’t my political opinions. Those are the laws of our land. And pretending otherwise doesn’t honor Pretti, it endangers the next guy who thinks that some slogan will protect him from the predictable consequences of his actions. 

The tragedy here isn’t just what happened. It’s how people in influence are talking about it and what the public is inferring from those misguided and inaccurate comments. The public is being taught by far too many, you’re entitled to walk into danger. No, you’re obligated to stay out of it. And until we start talking about that part, we’re not talking about what actually matters.

— Walter Hudson