OP-ED

The Second Amendment is often invoked as a shield—protection against government overreach, a guarantee of individual liberty, a promise that lawful gun ownership will not itself be treated as a crime. For decades, Americans have been told it exists for a singular, sobering purpose: to protect the people from tyranny. Not hunting. Not hobbyism. Not aesthetics. Tyranny.

If those words are more than a slogan, then the killing of Alex Pretti should enrage anyone who claims to take the Constitution seriously.

According to public reporting, Pretti was legally carrying a registered firearm, holstered, and in compliance with the law. He was not committing a crime. He was not threatening anyone. He was exercising the very right that millions of Americans insist must be protected at all costs. Yet that lawful act did not protect him from being treated as a threat—and ultimately, from being killed by a federal agent.

This is the uncomfortable truth at the center of America’s gun debate: the Second Amendment is defended loudly in theory, but too often abandoned in practice when it matters most.

We are told that a “good guy with a gun” deserves respect, legal protection, and the benefit of the doubt. We are told that law-abiding gun owners should not fear the state. We are told that carrying legally is not suspicious, not dangerous, and not justification for deadly force. These claims are repeated endlessly—until a real person tests them.

When that happens, the rhetoric evaporates. In its place comes a chilling refrain: He should have complied.

That phrase should stop us cold.

Complied with what, exactly? With the idea that a constitutional right becomes void the moment an armed agent of the state feels uncomfortable? With the notion that lawful behavior must instantly yield to unchecked authority? With the understanding that rights are theoretical until tested—and optional when inconvenient?

That is not how the Constitution works.

The Second Amendment does not exist in isolation. It is inseparable from the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process. Together, they establish a core principle: the government does not get to treat lawful conduct as grounds for summary punishment, much less a death sentence.

When a man is killed for exercising a right explicitly protected by the Constitution, that is not law enforcement doing its job. It is the failure of constitutional restraint.

And here lies the hypocrisy that must be confronted honestly.

You cannot argue that firearms are necessary to protect against a tyrannical government while simultaneously defending a federal agent who kills a citizen for legally carrying one. You cannot claim that armed self-defense is a safeguard against state violence while insisting that the proper response to state violence is unquestioning obedience. You cannot celebrate the Founders’ distrust of centralized power while reflexively siding with it when it pulls the trigger.

At that point, the Second Amendment is no longer a principle. It is a prop.

The Founders did not write, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed—unless an agent of the government feels threatened.” They did not condition liberty on perfect submission. They did not design a system where rights exist only until asserted, and then disappear the moment they are.

If the answer to a lawful citizen being killed is “he should have complied,” then what is being defended is not constitutional freedom. It is authority without limits—and that is the very definition of tyranny the Second Amendment is supposedly meant to resist.

Defending gun rights cannot stop at opposing new legislation or celebrating abstract freedoms. It must include demanding accountability when the state or its agents violate those rights. It must include insisting that legality actually means something. And it must include acknowledging that a constitutional guarantee that fails in real-world encounters is no guarantee at all.

This is not a left-versus-right issue. It is a consistency issue. A credibility issue. A moral issue.

Alex Pretti’s death is not a side note in the gun debate. It is the debate. Either the Second Amendment protects people in real life, in real encounters with real agents of the state—or it is merely a slogan, invoked loudly and discarded quietly when it demands courage.

His killing forces a simple, uncomfortable question:
Do we believe in constitutional rights only when they are easy—or when they are tested?

Because if the answer is “only when they’re easy,” then the Constitution isn’t failing us.

We’re failing it.