Trump admin should stop talking about guns

OPINION:

The Trump administration is doing itself no favors by the way its members are addressing gun rights in the press after the shooting of Alex Pretti.

Whether it’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggesting that possession of multiple magazines is indicative of ill intent, FBI Director Kash Patel urging against going to protests with a “fully loaded gun” or President Trump saying you “can’t have guns” at a protest, the administration isn’t inspiring confidence in its support of the Second Amendment.

The only member of the Trump administration to have accurately addressed the issue thus far is press secretary Karoline Levitt, who correctly stated that the issue is the enforcement of federal immigration law.

Second Amendment activists don’t expect every Republican to be a John Wick-level marksman or a Stephen Halbrook-level legal expert on firearms, but we do expect them to know, at the very least, existing law and to use proper terminology — particularly since certain terminology invokes certain statutes and penalties.

Pretti’s death inspired well-funded gun control groups such as the Giffords organization, Everytown and the Brady group to cosplay as fickle supporters so as to exploit the daylight between the Trump administration and gun rights activists.

Lost on much of the public is that each of these groups zealously campaigned to make gun owners such as Pretti felons for simply carrying a pistol in the first place.

Yes, you can carry to a protest in most states (just not Gov. Gavin Newsom’s California), as I have done numerous times with a Glock 19 on my hip. Yes, you can possess multiple magazines. I customarily carry at least two. Most important, yes, there is a difference between mere carry by law enforcement and felony impediment of federal law enforcement under 18 U.S.C. §111.

Carrying while committing a felony is itself another felony.

The Second Amendment isn’t an exemption for making stupid choices, though. In fact, every bit of training I’ve ever had highlights the importance of not making stupid choices while exercising Second Amendment rights.

The left is eager to yoke Pretti to the Second Amendment to create friction between factions on the right and mainstream the idea that guns, rather than people and their poor choices, are the problem. The administration must not take this bait.

The issue was never really the Second Amendment, but the administration’s remarks are inadvertently helping the left make it so. The only reply should ever be that it’s against existing law to carry while committing a felony. Separate are the issues of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the lethal response by law enforcement.

If lawmakers and bureaucrats are going to make, administer or adjudicate law on firearms, then they need to demonstrate a remedial understanding of the issue out of respect for the Constitution and the citizens they serve.

• Dana Loesch is the host of the No. 1 nationally syndicated weekday talk program, “Dana Show,” a bestselling author and a Second Amendment advocate. She lives in Dallas.