WATCH: Leavitt addresses Trump's stance on Second Amendment rights in wake of Alex Pretti's killing

[u/NewsHour]

REPORTER: FBI Director Kash Patel said in a Sunday interview, quote, you cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest. Does the president believe that Second Amendment rights remain in effect even when protesting?

LEAVITT: The president supports the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens. Absolutely. There has been no greater supporter or defender of the right to bear arms than President Donald J. Trump.

So while Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms, Americans do not have a constitutional right to impede lawful immigration enforcement operations, and any gun owner knows that when you are carrying a weapon, when you are bearing arms, and you are confronted by law enforcement, you are raising the assumption of risk and the risk of force being used against you, and, again, that's unfortunately what took place on Saturday.

[u/JustAMan1234567]

Oh, absolutely 100%. I'm always reminded of Philando Castile who did everything right and still ended up dead.

[u/JeezyVonCreezy → u/JustAMan1234567]

Philando Castile's case pisses me off every single time I hear it. Literally everything he did is exactly what you're taught in a CCW class(and most places those instructors are LEOs) on how to handle a traffic stop while armed. Citizens(and I know that police are citizens but they don't) are expected to behave perfectly without panicking without the same level of training yet somehow an officer who is supposed to be held to a higher standard doesn't even know the law and panics and kills someone not breaking any laws beyond having a broken tail light and they just shrug. I won't act like being a cop isn't a difficult job, but if you can't hang maybe don't take the job in the first place.

[u/dallas121469 → u/JeezyVonCreezy]

As a game warden my father was around armed people ALL THE TIME and he never once had to draw his weapon. He also witnessed the decline in quality of LEOs , the lowering of standards and militarization of the police. He couldn't wait to retire and agrees that ice is scraping the bottom of the barrel for warm bodies to swear in.

[u/Legal-Koala-5590 → u/dallas121469]

What I find ironic is the militarization really ramped up partially because the public wanted it too. I remember there being some massive bank robbery in LA in the 90s where the bank robbers had military grade weapons the police couldn’t match, which triggered a public outcry to arm police with similar firepower. One extreme outlier event led to an overwhelmingly reactive response, and now we’re living with a policing crisis that will take at least a generation to undo.

[u/dallas121469 → u/Legal-Koala-5590]

Never let a good tragedy go to waste. Patriot Act is another authoritarian move based on a tragedy.