Ground Zero to Domestic Terror
The NRA, Alex Pretti, and the Pipeline to Political Violence
**Personal Note: I know all our feeds have been inundated, absolutely saturated with different angles and different perspectives; different interpretations and lies.
I’m not going to do that today…
.. because I can’t help but reflect on the goodness that Alex Pretti was—because that is the only explanation for a man who saw the risks and did it anyway.
The accounts from his friends, his family, his coworkers—they all paint the same picture. That was the man he was: a protector, a man of honor, a good man. He spent his days caring for America’s wounded veterans in the ICU. He saw someone being hurt and he went to help.**
So I’m going to take a different angle on things today
..because in honor of that good man, there is one group that decided to completely abandon him—and in doing so, abandoned everyone like him. Everyone like me. The left-wing gun owners. The protectors. The people who carry because we hope we never have to use it.
That’s what makes the best gun owner, and Alex knew exactly what it would mean if he used his firearm that day. So instead, he used his phone. He used his body. He tried to help a woman who’d been pushed to the ground and pepper-sprayed by federal agents. His gun stayed holstered.
He did everything right. He was everything the NRA claims to celebrate—a responsible gun owner, a protector, a good guy trying to stop a bad situation. And when federal agents shot him in the back and kept shooting his limp body until the mag was spent, the National Rifle Association had a choice.
They could defend a lawful gun owner exercising his constitutional rights.
Or they could play politics.
They chose politics.
The Organization That Abandoned a Protector
Instead of asking why a man who never drew his weapon was shot nine times, the NRA blamed Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Their statement read: “For months, radical progressive politicians like Tim Walz have incited violence against law enforcement officers who are simply trying to do their jobs.”
Read that again. A nurse caring for veterans. Legally carrying a concealed weapon. Shot nine times with his gun holstered. And the NRA’s response was to blame Democratic politicians for “inciting violence.”
There was no mention of Alex’s Second Amendment rights. No defense of a lawful gun owner. No questions about whether shooting an unarmed man nine times might constitute excessive force. Just partisan blame-shifting that turned a protector into a political talking point.
This is the disrespect. This is the abandonment. Alex Pretti stood against tyranny—actual tyranny, the kind where armed federal agents shoot a man holding a phone—and the organization that claims to defend Americans against government overreach chose to defend the agents instead.
Because Alex was at the wrong protest.
What the NRA Claims to Stand For
For decades, the NRA has sold itself as the defender of the responsible gun owner. The protector. The sheepdog watching over the flock. They’ve built an entire identity around the idea that good men with guns are the last line of defense against chaos and tyranny.
Alex Pretti was that man.
He wasn’t some weekend warrior LARPing as a patriot. He cared for the men and women who served this country. He had the training, the permit, the legal right to carry. And when he saw injustice, he didn’t reach for his gun—he reached for his phone. He used his body to try to help someone in distress.
That’s not just responsible gun ownership. That’s moral courage. That’s the kind of restraint and judgment that separates protectors from vigilantes.
And the NRA couldn’t find it in themselves to mention his name.
The Contrast They Won’t Acknowledge
Let’s talk about what the NRA does celebrate.
When Kyle Rittenhouse crossed state lines with an AR-15 and killed two people at a protest in Kenosha, the NRA-aligned media celebrated the outcome of his trial as a victory for the Second Amendment. Armed civilian presence at protests was framed as heroic, as civic duty, as the ultimate expression of gun rights.
When Alex Pretti—a man who spent his career serving those who served—showed up to a protest with a legally concealed weapon and tried to help someone, he was shot nine times. And the NRA blamed liberals.
The message is unmistakable: your Second Amendment rights only matter if you’re at the right kind of protest. If you’re protecting the right kind of people. If your politics align with theirs.
Alex protected the wrong person. So his rights didn’t matter.
This is the ultimate disrespect to a man who embodied everything they claim to value.
Even Other Gun Rights Groups Saw It
What makes this abandonment even more damning is that other gun rights organizations immediately recognized what the NRA refused to see.
Gun Owners of America defended Alex’s right to carry while protesting. The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus stated clearly: “Every peaceable Minnesotan has the right to keep and bear arms—including while attending protests.” Both condemned suggestions that approaching law enforcement while armed makes a shooting automatically justified.
These organizations understood something fundamental: if you only defend gun rights when it’s politically convenient, you’re not defending rights at all. You’re just picking sides.
The NRA picked their side. And it wasn’t Alex’s.
The Left-Wing Gun Owners They Abandoned
I’m a gun owner. So are millions of other Americans who don’t fit the NRA’s political profile. We carry for the same reason Alex did—not because we want to use our weapons, but because we hope we never have to.
We’re the nurses and teachers and social workers who’ve taken the responsibility of self-defense seriously. We’ve gotten the training. We’ve gotten the permits. We understand that carrying a firearm is a profound responsibility, not a political statement.
We’re the ones who know that the best gunfight is the one you never have. That drawing your weapon should be the absolute last resort. That true protection often means de-escalation, not confrontation.
Alex knew this. That’s why his gun stayed holstered while he was being killed.
And the NRA’s response tells us exactly what they think of gun owners like us: our rights are negotiable. Our lives are political props. Our restraint is weakness.
When we needed them to stand on principle, they stood on partisanship instead.
What Alex’s Death Reveals
Alex Pretti’s murder and the NRA’s response reveal something we need to confront directly: the organization that claims to be the defender of the Second Amendment has become something else entirely.
They’re not defending gun rights. They’re defending a political tribe.
They’re not protecting responsible gun owners. They’re protecting an ideology where firearms are symbols of cultural identity rather than tools requiring judgment and restraint.
They’re not standing against government tyranny. They’re defending federal agents who shot a man nine times while his gun remained holstered—because the victim had the wrong politics.
This matters beyond just one man’s death, as devastating as that is. It matters because it exposes the hollowness at the center of the NRA’s current mission. And it matters because that hollowness has consequences far beyond abandoned principles.
Instead, they used his death as a political cudgel against Democrats.
Ground Zero: How the NRA Enables Domestic Terrorism
Let’s be clear about what “ground zero” means here. The NRA is not directly planning terrorist attacks. But they are the primary mainstream institution creating, normalizing, and disseminating the ideology that domestic terrorists adopt.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have identified anti-government militias and white supremacist groups as the most significant domestic terrorism threat facing the United States. These aren’t fringe movements operating with completely foreign ideologies—they’re drawing directly from rhetoric the NRA has spent decades making mainstream.
This is ground zero in three specific ways:
1. Ideological Incubation The NRA creates the belief system that militias radicalize from. When the Boogaloo Bois prepare for armed conflict with the government, they’re not inventing new ideas—they’re taking the NRA’s “resist tyranny” and “from my cold dead hands” rhetoric to its logical conclusion. The NRA establishes the framework; militias just remove the fig leaf of “working within the system.”
2. Normalization of Political Violence By celebrating cases like Rittenhouse while ignoring cases like Pretti, the NRA establishes that armed presence at political events is acceptable, even heroic—but only for the right politics. This creates permission structure for militia groups. They’re not doing something radical; they’re doing what the mainstream gun rights movement has already normalized, just more openly.
3. Pipeline for Radicalization Economically desperate young men enter through mainstream gun culture, absorb NRA rhetoric about tyranny and resistance, find community in Second Amendment absolutism, and some percentage slide into militia movements that use identical language but advocate explicit violence. The NRA is where that pipeline begins—not because they intend it, but because they’ve built an ideological ecosystem that makes that slide almost frictionless.
Ground zero doesn’t mean the NRA plants bombs. It means they’re the source point of the ideology, the legitimizer of the rhetoric, and the mainstream institution that refuses to draw boundaries when their messaging gets adopted by terrorists.
When Patriot Front members get arrested for planning violence at Pride events, they articulate the same views about government tyranny and Second Amendment rights that the NRA has made respectable. When Three Percenters stockpile weapons for “inevitable” conflict with federal authorities, they’re acting on fears the NRA has cultivated for fundraising purposes. When militia members murder federal officers or plot to kidnap governors, they justify it with logic the NRA has spent billions of dollars promoting.
The NRA will say they don’t support violence. They’ll say they advocate legal, political solutions. They’ll say they can’t control what extremists do with their message.
But when your message is “the government is tyrannical,” “they’re coming for your guns,” “the Second Amendment exists for armed resistance,” and “any compromise is surrender”—you don’t get to act surprised when people start preparing for war. You don’t get to deny responsibility when the ideology you’ve mainstreamed gets weaponized.
The Shared Language of Extremism
The connection between NRA rhetoric and militia ideology isn’t speculative—it’s direct and documented:
• “Any regulation is infringement” - Both the NRA and groups like the Boogaloo Bois reject all gun control as unconstitutional tyranny, no compromise.
• “From my cold dead hands” - The NRA’s famous rallying cry becomes militia preparation for literal armed resistance to confiscation.
• “The Second Amendment exists to resist tyranny” - NRA frames gun rights as defense against government overreach; militias prepare for that conflict..
• “The government wants to disarm you so they can control you” - NRA fundraising rhetoric; militia groups’ core organizing principle.
• “Gun owners are the last line of defense of American freedom” - NRA identity marketing; militia self-conception as patriots preparing for civil war.
• “Real Americans own guns” - NRA’s cultural identity politics; militia movements’ definition of legitimate citizenship.
• “Stand your ground” - NRA-backed legislation normalizing lethal force; militia ideology justifying violence against perceived threats.
• “If they take our guns, everything else falls” - NRA absolutism; militia movements’ justification for violence as existential defense.
Exploiting Economic Desperation
Here’s where the psychology becomes particularly insidious. Many of the young men drawn to these militia movements aren’t just ideologically motivated—they’re economically desperate. They’re watching wages stagnate, housing become unaffordable, and stable employment disappear. They feel the system has failed them, and they’re not entirely wrong.
But rather than directing that rage at the economic structures and corporate interests actually responsible for their exploitation, both the NRA and militia movements redirect it. The enemy becomes the government (particularly when Democrats control it), immigrants, “coastal elites,” and liberals who supposedly want to take their guns and their culture.
A firearm becomes more than a tool for self-defense. It becomes an identity anchor for men who feel they have little else. In a world where they can’t afford a house, can’t find stable work, can’t build the life they were promised—at least they can be armed. At least they can be “patriots.” At least they can belong to something that tells them they matter, that they’re warriors, that they’re the last line of defense.
The NRA’s marketing genius has been to transform economic anxiety into Second Amendment absolutism. You can’t control your economic future, but you can control this weapon. You can’t change the system that exploits your labor, but you can join a community of “real Americans” who understand what’s really at stake.
Militia groups take that exact same desperation and channel it one step further: into preparation for armed conflict.
Here’s the brutal calculus: economic anxiety drives gun sales, gun sales drive NRA revenue, NRA revenue funds political campaigns that protect the interests of corporations continuing to exploit workers—the same exploitation creating the economic anxiety that started the cycle.
Meanwhile, the young men most vulnerable to this messaging—white working-class men watching their economic prospects disappear—are offered an identity as armed patriots instead of solidarity with other exploited workers. Their rage at being used by the system gets redirected into culture war grievances and militia movements rather than labor organizing or collective action that might actually address their material conditions.
The Pipeline in Action
The Rittenhouse case provides a perfect example of how this normalization works. A 17-year-old crossing state lines with an AR-15 to “protect property” during a protest would once have been universally condemned as dangerous vigilantism. Instead, major elements of the gun rights movement celebrated it as civic duty.
That celebration didn’t just happen in militia group chat rooms—it happened in mainstream conservative media, in NRA-aligned publications, in countless social media posts shared by millions of Americans. The message was clear: armed civilians should show up to political protests, and if they end up shooting people, that’s justified self-defense.
Is it any wonder that militia groups heard that as validation?
When federal agents shot Alex Pretti, those same voices blamed Democratic politicians rather than questioning whether the shooting was justified. The implicit message: state violence against the “wrong kind” of armed citizen is acceptable, while armed presence by the “right kind” of citizen at political events is heroic.
This creates a framework where political violence becomes increasingly normalized—but only when directed at the right targets.
Multiple Boogaloo adherents were arrested at protests in 2020, some explicitly trying to instigate violence they hoped would trigger larger conflict. Several had extensive histories in mainstream gun rights communities before radicalization. The progression wasn’t a leap—it was a slide along a spectrum where the rhetoric barely changed, just the willingness to act on it.
Patriot Front recruits heavily from communities already steeped in gun culture and Second Amendment absolutism. They don’t need to teach people that the government is tyrannical and gun rights are under attack—the NRA and aligned media have spent decades making that case. Patriot Front just needs to ask: “And what are you going to do about it?”
This is what makes it ground zero: the NRA has made extremist ideology mainstream, normalized rhetoric that justifies violence, and created an identity politics around firearms that vulnerable men radicalize through. They are the institution where domestic terrorist ideology begins its journey from fringe to action.
And their response to Alex Pretti—a legal gun owner murdered by federal agents—shows they’re more invested in maintaining this ecosystem than confronting where it leads. Instead of defending his Second Amendment rights, they blamed Democrats. Instead of questioning state violence, they redirected to partisan grievances.
Because defending Pretti’s rights would require admitting something uncomfortable: that “government tyranny” isn’t always Democrats passing background check laws. Sometimes it’s federal agents shooting a nurse nine times. And if they acknowledge that, they’d have to grapple with what they’ve told their supporters to do about tyranny.
The militia groups already have their answer. They learned it from the NRA.
A Question of Principles
There was a time when civil liberties organizations were expected to defend rights even—especially—when doing so was politically uncomfortable. The ACLU’s historical willingness to defend the speech rights of groups they found abhorrent was rooted in the understanding that principles mean nothing if they only apply to people you agree with.
The NRA once positioned itself as that kind of principled defender of the Second Amendment. But principled defense means standing up for the VA nurse at the immigration protest just as vigorously as you celebrate the teenager who killed protesters in Kenosha.
Alex Pretti was a lawful gun owner exercising his constitutional rights. He’s now dead. And the organization that claims to defend those rights found it more important to score political points than to ask whether a man who never drew his weapon should have been shot nine times.
What This Reveals
The NRA’s response to Alex Pretti’s death reveals something fundamental about the organization’s current priorities: constitutional principles take a back seat to partisan politics.
A nurse who spent his career serving veterans had the legal right to carry a firearm. He exercised that right. He never drew his weapon. He was shot nine times by federal agents. And the organization that claims to be the defender of the Second Amendment chose to blame a governor and mayor rather than ask any questions about why a lawful gun owner ended up dead.
The message to gun owners is unmistakable: your Second Amendment rights matter to the NRA only if you align with their political preferences. Exercise those rights at a protest they don’t approve of, and you’re on your own. Or worse—you become a prop in their narrative about dangerous liberals, rather than a citizen whose rights deserved protection.
The message to militia movements is equally clear: the NRA will celebrate armed presence at right-wing events and condemn state violence only when it serves partisan goals. The Second Amendment, in practice, applies selectively based on politics. The system is rigged. Only armed resistance remains.
That’s not a principled defense of constitutional rights. That’s recruitment material for domestic terrorism.
The NRA doesn’t create domestic terrorism directly. But it creates the conditions where it flourishes. It normalizes the rhetoric, provides the ideological framework, builds the identity, and directs the grievances.
When that combustible mixture encounters the spark of militia recruitment, the organization’s response is to deny any connection while continuing to pour fuel on the fire.
Alex Pretti was a lawful gun owner exercising his constitutional rights. He cared for America’s veterans. He tried to help someone in distress. He never drew his weapon. And the organization that claims to defend the Second Amendment above all else couldn’t find it in themselves to defend him.
What they said tells us everything we need to know about what the NRA has become—and what it enables. And what a potential domestic terrorist will hear.
May we all be Renee. May we all be Alex. We need more of both.
Normally— This is where’d I ask you subscribe or upgrade to paid.. Instead I ask you to check on a neighbor. Go meet one you’ve never spoken to. Add to your local community. If you see ICE, Notify ICEOUT.ORG. and your local immigrant advocacy network.
I’ll leave you all with this. You’ve likely seen this video, but likely on it’s own. This the accompanying passage from the original post, on hearing of the loss of Alex:
Post from Mac Randolph
RIP Alex Pretti,
He was my Dad’s ICU nurse. He read my dad’s final salute at the VA after he passed away. Never wanted to share this video, but his speech is very on point.
Also, my father’s final words to me were to continue to fight the good fight. He would be honored in Alex’s sacrifice, and ashamed of this current administration.
In my dad’s words, I encourage you all to continue to “fight the good fight.”
In Solidarity and Liberation:
~~☘️ Ginge ☘️
❤️ ❤️ ❤️
I did exactly what you suggest yesterday: got dressed and went into town to join my community on Route 101 holding signs and waving flags for solidarity.
We were late, but we got to meet some new friends and connect with some community leaders who we can assist with local needs. I already volunteered to work with the committee that will be helping our local food bank. The amount and quality of food has declined and decreased significantly in the last few weeks. We’re going to work to find more food and better nutrition options. I’m grateful for the opportunity to help.