How KS & MO Republicans are framing gun rights in wake of Alex Pretti shooting
Hours after the killing of Alex Pretti, an American citizen, at the hands of a federal agent in Minneapolis, a top Missouri Republican pointed specifically at the man’s gun as justification for the shooting.
“People who show up at a law enforcement event with a gun and participate are asking for whatever they get,” Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin, a Shelbina Republican, wrote in a lengthy Facebook post on Saturday, mere hours after Pretti’s death.
Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was legally carrying a handgun under Minnesota law when he was shot by federal agents, according to local authorities. Videos of the shooting posted by bystanders online show he had not drawn it and appeared to be disarmed before being shot multiple times.
In the wake of his death, however, Republican lawmakers and members of the Trump administration have cast Pretti as a terrorist and a threat to law enforcement. The focus for many Republicans has centered on his gun, an extraordinary argument that has scrambled the nation’s gun debate and sparked pushback from gun rights advocates.
Those snap reactions appear to contradict decades of Republican messaging in Kansas and Missouri, where guns are both ubiquitous and fiercely defended. Politics on either side of the state line is often littered with pro-gun imagery and the Republican-controlled legislatures in both states have adopted among the loosest firearm laws in the country.
Missouri Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican, claimed to The Star that Pretti, who was pepper-sprayed and tackled to the ground before he was shot, was “aggressively attacking” federal agents while armed. That “exponentially increases” the likelihood of getting shot, he said.
“He made a choice to engage…armed… and has no one to blame but himself,” Brattin said.
Kansas Republicans interviewed by The Star were similarly critical of Pretti.
Kansas Rep. Pat Proctor, a Leavenworth Republican, said that “any responsible gun owner” would have known to inform officers that they were armed so that their weapon would not be interpreted as a threat. Pretti’s actions were reckless, he said.
“You are in the act of committing a crime when you impede federal law enforcement officers,” said Proctor, who is running for secretary of state. “If you are also armed, you are now committing a crime while armed.”
Sen. Virgil Peck, a Montgomery Republican, called Pretti “a goofball” and chided him for conceal carrying “in a volatile situation.”
“He shouldn’t have been acting out,” Peck said.
Guns pervasive in Kansas & Missouri
That isn’t how Republicans typically talk about guns.
In Missouri, 19-year-olds can carry concealed weapons without a permit and state law severely restrains cities and counties from setting their own regulations. Campaign ads are also awash in guns, in which politicians promote the Second Amendment while holding high-powered rifles. And concealed weapons are allowed in the Missouri Capitol, where some lawmakers over the years have put up office signs encouraging the carrying of guns.
Kansas has its own slate of permissive gun laws. In recent years, lawmakers lowered the minimum age for concealed carrying to 18 with a provisional license — unlicensed concealed and open carry is legal for anyone 21 or older. Firearms are permitted on university campuses, and state laws minimize local governments’ ability to tighten restrictions on who can own a gun and where they can take it.
The focus on Pretti’s gun both locally and nationally has drawn blowback from Democrats, gun rights advocates and some conservatives, a constellation of groups often on opposing sides of the gun debate. The conflicting arguments illustrate the nation’s deeply polarized political mentality of “us versus them,” said Matt Harris, a political scientist at Park University in Parkville.
“I think we have a party where what Trump says goes and where, you know, our side can never be wrong,” said Harris. “You sometimes get these circumstances where people are saying things that seemingly contradict what their prior political beliefs were.”
The criticism of Pretti also stands in sharp contrast to the Republican defense of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who brought a gun to a 2020 protest in Wisconsin and shot and killed two people.
Gun rights advocates in Minnesota and nationally were quick to defend Pretti’s right to bear arms in the wake of comments justifying the shooting from members of the Trump administration, including FBI Director Kash Patel. The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus issued a statement saying Pretti was legally armed and there was no evidence that he had an intent to harm officers.
“Every peaceable Minnesotan has the right to keep and bear arms — including while attending protests, acting as observers, or exercising their First Amendment rights,” the statement said. “These rights do not disappear when someone is lawfully armed, and they must be respected and protected at all times.”
Hypocritical stance?
Locally, the reaction from gun rights groups was critical — but more muted.
Kevin Jamison, a Northland attorney and one of Kansas City’s most prolific gun rights advocates, said in an interview that O’Laughlin’s post was a “knee-jerk reaction.”
“It was poorly thought-out,” Jamison said. “This is America. There are guns everywhere. That doesn’t mean the person is a threat to law enforcement.”
But Jamison went on to say that he did not know what led up to Pretti’s death and had not seen videos of the shooting. He argued that demonstrators — amid the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on American cities — have “raised the temperature on both sides.”
“I don’t know the particulars of this particular incident,” he said. “It’s obviously a bad result. But when you interfere with law enforcement, bad things do happen whether you have a gun or not.”
Democrats, who have routinely fought for stricter gun laws, flatly called the Republican stance on Pretti’s gun hypocritical in interviews with The Star.
“The hypocrisy is astounding — I’ve heard Republicans loudly defend the Second Amendment as, quite frankly, a sacred right,” said Missouri Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat. “Now this inconsistency is glaring.”
Nurrenbern’s colleague, Sen. Stephen Webber, a Columbia Democrat, framed Pretti’s death as one of the “final tests” of whether Republican lawmakers “believe anything for themselves or just do whatever Trump says all the time.”
Webber, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, juxtaposed the response to Pretti’s shooting with opposition from Republican state lawmakers to a bill he filed that would have prevented minors from carrying handguns.
“This week, they believe that if you show up legally carrying a gun and a federal agent executes you, then you get what you get,” Webber said. “It’s mind blowing.”
Former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, a Democrat, said many of his Republican friends, who are strong Second Amendment supporters, think Pretti was murdered. It’s only Republican lawmakers who appear to be inconsistent with their support of gun rights, he said.
“For them it does seem like gun rights are only possessed by people who share their political affiliation across the board,” Kander, a U.S. Army veteran, said in an interview.
Kander said it damages politicians’ credibility when they constantly tell voters that what they see with their own eyes isn’t true.
“Everybody can see what’s happening in Minnesota and they are constantly saying the opposite of what’s happening,” he said.
‘Not very Christian’
For their part, some Republicans in Kansas and Missouri have taken a more measured approach. O’Laughlin herself updated her post after she said she received an email saying her comment “was not very Christian.”
“It wasn’t Christian and I shouldn’t have said it,” the top Republican lawmaker wrote in her updated post. “A better way would be to point out people have the right to protest but they need to obey the law, which would include not interfering with officers doing their job.”
When asked to expand on her post, O’Laughlin told The Star in a text message that “anyone with common sense doesn’t go to an environment like this one carrying a loaded gun, extra ammunition and then resist officers.”
In Kansas, Republican U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran said in a statement that he was deeply troubled by the shootings in Minneapolis, a reference to Pretti and the fatal shooting of former Kansas City resident Renee Good, also in Minneapolis at the hands of a federal agent.
“We have a right to free speech, to peaceably assemble and to bear arms,” Moran said. “We also expect government to protect us from lawless behavior. Enforcing immigration laws that remove dangerous criminals from our streets and neighborhoods makes us safer and increases our national security.”
Moran said that local, state and federal officials should work together to uphold the law. Law enforcement should reflect the nation’s values and citizens should obey the law, he said.
“This tragic circumstance should be investigated to the fullest extent to ensure transparency and accountability,” he said.
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Mark Alford, a Missouri Republican, in a statement to The Star, attempted to strike a balance between his support for the Second Amendment and his staunch defense of the Trump administration’s crackdown.
“Every American has the right to peacefully assemble. As a longtime advocate for our 2A rights, I also believe Americans have the God-given right to lawfully carry a firearm,” Alford’s statement said. “However, no one has the right to obstruct law enforcement, threaten officers, or resist arrest. When someone does any of those things, they put themselves at risk of being met with the use of force.”
For Harris, the political scientist, there will always be individuals who try to justify or make excuses for a shooting like the killing of Pretti in Minneapolis. But the flood of videos posted online — both of the shooting and actions of federal agents — have made it clear to most people that his death was wrong, he said.
“I do think there are some signs that there are a lot of people, even on the right, who recognize that these actions by ICE are unjustified and aren’t sustainable,” he said.
This story was originally published January 26, 2026 at 6:05 PM.
