On January 24, protester and legal gun owner Alex Pretti was shot and killed by United States Customs and Border Protection agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, making national news.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem almost immediately said that Pretti brandished a gun and attacked the officers, yet the footage available from multiple angles demonstrated that this was not the case. In fact, Pretti had been disarmed before he was shot.

Many conservatives, both influencers and politicians, rushed to justify the agents’ actions, with a particular emphasis on the reported politics and past behavior of Pretti. The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh even went so far as to say that Pretti “got what was coming to him.”

Aren’t conservatives traditionally in favor of free speech, and perhaps even more so, gun rights?

Some were. But so many weren’t that it was left to libertarians to actually defend the First and Second Amendments and to note that Americans shouldn’t be murdered by the state for exercising them and their deaths justified by lying politicians.

The most high profile libertarian in the U.S. Senate came out swinging after seeing the video of the Pretti killing.

Rand Paul said on Fox News, “When people watch that video and the government tells them, ‘Well, he was assaulting the police officers,’ nobody with any objectivity believes that’s what’s happening.”

“In fact, the opposite appears to be true,” Paul continued. “As the man retreats with each altercation, he retreats, and then the woman is thrown violently to the ground. He was thrown to the ground. No American believes that he was assaulting the officers. In fact, the opposite appears to be true.”

The administration initially said that Pretti was at fault for having a gun at a protest, even a legal one.

What?!

FBI Director Kash Patel said, “You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”

It is?! Remember these are Republicans saying this about firearms in a Republican administration.

Libertarian Republican Senator Rand Paul said instead, “They said he brandished his weapon. That is not true. If you keep saying things that are not true, you’re going to encourage more of this crap.”

“I’ve been to hundreds of rallies where people are armed,” Paul continued. “Virtually every meeting I go to in Kentucky, people wear their concealed carry. They wear their open carry. They have the constitutional right to carry.”

To cover their asses over this shooting, were Republicans just going to become the party of gun control now? For days after Pretti was killed, many conservatives sounded more like leftwing gun control advocates than the party most historically known for standing up for the Second Amendment. Is David Hogg now in the running to be the GOP’s man in 2028?

The most libertarian Republican in the U.S. House pushed back on those in his party who were defending the shooting with a simple but poignant message:

Carrying a firearm is not a death sentence, it’s a Constitutionally protected God-given right.https://t.co/xZ07oXtoIS pic.twitter.com/eCafFEfa6r

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) January 25, 2026

Senator Paul asked in an interview, sarcastically, “So if we’re gonna become the party that says ‘Oh you don’t have a Second Amendment right to carry, and you might just be shot’…”

Paul had a point. Because according to the twisted logic of many conservatives last week, the right to carry firearms now had brand new restrictions these people were just now inventing, which might include getting gunned down should Americans choose to exercise them.

Reason’s Eric Boehm shared a clip of Paul saying these things and observed:

Rand Paul is out there almost singlehandedly doing the work that every other Republican in Congress ought to be doing too. https://t.co/so9kNEVBBv

— Eric Boehm (@EricBoehm87) January 29, 2026

They weren’t. Somewhere between silence and defending the administration, it was as if defending the right to free speech and to bear arms had never been priorities in the GOP.

Instead of conservatives or Republicans defending an American’s constitutional right to freedom of expression and armed self defense, many focused on Pretti getting into shouting matches and altercations with law enforcement. (It’s worth recalling that many Democrats believed that January 6 protester and U.S. Air Force veteran, the late Ashli Babbitt, deserved her shooting death for also getting into shouting matches and altercations with law enforcement.)

Others came forward to defend Pretti’s supposed “kindness” and “gentleness” as the late nurse was described by a Catholic priest who claimed to know him.

But whether Pretti was a vicious commie or a male Mother Theresa, the principle is that every American has these rights by virtue of being American.

There’s not a personality contest to see who gets constitutional rights. This was something so many conservatives seem to completely forget in their anti-constitutional and hyper-partisan emotional reactions to the state killing of Pretti.

On the other hand, libertarians kept their wits along with normal, constitutional, and at one time conservative, principles.

The Libertarian Party of Indiana shared what any right thinking person might say about this tragedy:

Alex Pretti was a nurse legally carrying a firearm – which is his Constitutional right – who tried to offer aid to a person pushed to the ground by federal agents. You have a Constitutional right to protest peacefully and carry a firearm. Neither should be a death sentence. pic.twitter.com/iZsO5Fxeo5

— Libertarian Party of Indiana (@LPINorg) January 25, 2026

This is not what so many conservatives and Republicans were saying. Quite the opposite.

Thank God for libertarians.