Morning Wire - The Left’s Second Amendment Whiplash | 2.8.26

Episode Date: February 8, 2026

Looming Supreme Court battles and state-level gun laws could reshape the national fight over firearms. Gun-control activists are suddenly invoking the Second Amendment and a pro-2A administration struggles to clarify its message. Second Amendment expert Amy Swearer breaks down the legal realities behind police use of force, perceived threats, and why lawful gun ownership doesn’t exist in a vacuum during confrontational encounters. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.- - -Ep. 2622- - -Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3- - -Today's Sponsor:Good Ranchers - Get $25 off your first order and save up to $500 a year when you use code WIRE at https://GoodRanchers.com- - -Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacymorning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Following the fatal shooting of anti-ice protester Alex Preti in Minneapolis, the gun debate is raging once again in the U.S. Amid some head-turning reversals from the left on the right to bear arms, the pro-Second Amendment Trump administration has tightened up its messaging on the tragic case. In this episode, we talked to Second Amendment expert Amy Swearer about the legal and political implications of the shooting. I'm Daily Wire, Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Howl. This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire. This year, America turns 250.

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Amy Swearer is a senior legal fellow at advancing American freedom and joins us now. Amy, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. So let's start with the incidents that have sparked this heightened anti-ice campaign from the left, the shootings in Minneapolis. There are attempts now from the left to sort of turn the tables on the Second Amendment advocates. using these incidents, what exactly is their argument and do they have a point? Yeah, so you're really seeing almost this weird upside-down world, right, where you have

members of the Trump administration, which has objectively been one of the most pro-second Amendment administrations in many, many decades, who have come out with what I would argue are pretty inartfully worded statements surrounding issues of public carry a firearm, despite their record, right, as being pro-second amendment. And then on the other hand, you have just some of the world's biggest gun control advocates. People like Gavin Newsom, groups like Giffords and other gun control advocacy groups that suddenly are just staunch supporters of the Second Amendment. Right. And so it's just weird upside down world that we're living in. And I think at the end of the day, this is all a bunch of PR stunts from the gun control advocacy groups.

They're not really interested in any way to perform in defending Second Amendment. the rights. And I think that's unfortunate for the Trump administration, because again, they have so many Second Amendment victories that they could be celebrating. And I think what most average Americans are seeing right now is language coming out of the Trump administration that puts them in the same category as the language often used by gun control groups. And so it puts them in a bit of a quagmire. And it's unfortunate because it doesn't reflect the reality of actions. Now, did some of those regrettable comments you've mentioned in response to the Preti situation come from Cash Patel? Yes. So Cash Patel was one of those, certainly not the only one that has come out.

But basically, between Cash Patel and a couple of other members of the administration, there was this general sense in their immediate comments of, you know, rushing to the fact that the individual who was shot, Alex Prattie, was carrying a firearm. at you could characterize it as a protest. I would characterize it as, frankly, illegal, non-First Amendment protected activity. And I think what was difficult for these members of the administration, including Captain Tell, was trying to find a way to articulate what the problem was. And what actually came out of their mouths was essentially saying, well, the problem was that Alex Prattie was carrying a firearm in public or around law enforcement or he was carrying a

particular type of firearm with particular types of magazines. And I'm not sure that that's actually what they meant to convey. It certainly is not what the actual problem was, right? The problem was what Alex Freddie was doing while he was carrying that firearm and the manner in which he approached law enforcement with that firearm. Right. And we've since seen video of him allegedly kicking in the taillight of a nice vehicle, so some violent inclinations in the past interactions. But it does seem from initial investigations that this might have been just a really tragic sequence of events in how the firearm in particular prompted lethal response. In some ways, this does beg the question then, are citizens safer when they aren't allowed to carry a weapon in certain situations? Or is the

argument that they're always safer if they do feel like they're going to be in a situation where they're threatened? I think when you look at your average ordinary law-abiding gun owner, absolutely. They are safer when they are carrying that firearm, when they have the ability to respond, to criminal violence with, you often hear firearms called death at a distance, right, that they're able to remove themselves from that violent confrontation and still defend themselves. Obviously, that changes when you have someone who is prone to criminal activity, when you have someone who is mentally unstable when they have that firearm, right? But that's not what we're talking about with your average ordinary law-abiding gun owner.

Certainly, when you are that ordinary gun owner and you find yourself, going into confrontational circumstances, that, again, that changes the reality. If you are going out of your way to confront law enforcement, to confront anybody and you're going in armed, the presence of that firearm is going to change that dynamic fundamentally for better or for worse. And in this case, I think you are correct that it fundamentally changed it for worse. I don't think that was ever necessarily Alex Predey's intent. I don't get the sense that he intended to, And he certainly did not ever draw that firearm to threaten law enforcement. But it's presence in that confrontational manner as soon as law enforcement became aware of that.

Well, now you've got a fundamentally different dynamic where law enforcement doesn't know his intent. You've got multiple officers trying to figure out where that gun is, what to do with it. And I truly think you have a tragic misinterpretation of the circumstances by the officer who ultimately shot him. But it's a complicated dynamic. And I don't think that undermines the second amendment reality. I think some of this is incumbent upon Alex Pretti and the circumstances he intentionally went into and foster while lawfully carrying that fire. I think a lot of people have looked at this incident and the situation with Renee Good. And they both come down to split second decisions that have to be made by these officers.

A perceived threat, whether or not it's a real threat, comes into play. when we're talking about the legal arguments in these cases, what are the arguments that are at play on both sides here in terms of both good and pretty? For both of them, for the law enforcement officer who used lethal force, that analysis, that legal analysis is going to be the same. So in order for that use of force to be justified, that officer had to reasonably believe, have a reasonable fear that he was about to be an imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm. So he doesn't have to actually have already had that harm inflicted.

and he can't just wildly guess. There needs to be some reasonable component as to why he feared that he was at imminent risk of that. So in the case of Renee Good, that he was imminently about to be hit by a vehicle, which is a deadly object, right? That is certainly something that can afflict serious bodily harm. And in the case of Alex Preti, you're looking at, did that officer reasonably believe that Alex Preddy had access to that firearm, was about to use that firearm. So that's going to be the same for both of these scenarios.

I think one of the biggest distinguishing factors is that we now know from the Alex Preddy video, right? We can slow that down. We can analyze it from all these different angles. And we know that as a matter of objective fact, at the moment Alex Preddy was shot, he didn't have possession of that firearm, right? It had been taken away from him. And so I think a lot of people are struggling with this next concept of could the officer have been objectively wrong, but still reasonable in his interpretation of what was happening because he just didn't know, right?

Did he see Alex Freddie's phone in his hand and believe that was a firearm? You know, so you've got this sort of complicating factor here of something being objectively wrong, but still potentially reasonable. One other question related to both of these cases, we see the battle now going on between the state and local investigators versus federal investigators into these situations where you might have had maybe misconduct by law enforcement, questions about the proper use of force, etc. Where are the lines drawn? Can the federal government just say no, the local and state officials cannot intervene and cannot investigate? Yeah, well, so it's certainly difficult because you have potentially a crime. or civil actions at both a state and a federal level. Certainly, there's nothing that the federal government can do to definitively stop a state investigation.

There's going to be that tension, and it's not always clear sort of who has, at the end of the day, the authority to tell who to do what. But I do think, again, that's part of the tension of federalism. You have potentially charges under state law and state investigation charges. And I understand from the administration's viewpoint, you have a state in Minnesota that you have officials that have been wildly non-compliant and unhelpful in terms of enforcing federal immigration law who have been bombastic and really feigning the flames of a lot of this community tension. And so they don't necessarily trust local police, local officials to do this investigation in a thorough way.

But at the end of the day, that that tension is always going to be there when you have both, you know, state and federal charges potentially. So in that case, we might see federal officials simply refuse to cooperate with local and state investigations. I think that's certainly a possibility in anything that is most likely what will happen. I don't think given the relationship or lack thereof that has developed between state and federal officials, that the administration is really wanting to cooperate or be helpful in as much as the state of Minnesota is not wanting to be helpful in enforcing immigration law. And I don't know that there's a good answer to that. And in fact, I think the best scenario would be the salvaging of that relationship. I think so much of this tension would resolve itself if state and local officials would be more cooperative, or at least not actively hindering federal enforcement of those immigration laws.

Right. And that's clearly Tom Homan's main goal right now, trying to encourage more cooperation from the state and local officials. Final question, pretty broad for you. But is there a second amendment case you're following that we should be more aware of? Well, I'll give you two things. So at the Supreme Court level, we've now heard oral argument in the follow-up to the Bruin case. So it's a case called Wolford v. Lopez. So the short version of this is Hawaii after the Supreme Court told them at a bunch of other states, hey, you actually do have to give ordinary citizens some method of carrying in public. You do have to issue them public carry permits.

Hawaii said, fine, we'll give you the permits, but we are going to make them utterly worthless outside the home. So it's a case involving some of those restrictions that Hawaii has put on those permits. We should have a decision in that by the middle of the summer. And all indications seem to be that the Supreme Court is gearing up to. And this is a very, very official technical term, headbop Hawaii over this. So look out for that. And I'd say one of the bigger things that's sort of flying under the radar for those who are not living in Virginia is what Democrats are doing in Virginia in terms of

gun laws almost immediately. We've seen a slew of legislation threatening to turn Virginia basically into the East Coast equivalent of California in terms of gun laws. So keep an eye out for what's going on there because I think ultimately that will end up a bigger national news flying under the radar right now. We've been tracking the very aggressive leftward turn of Virginia and a lot of legislation going on there with the new leadership. Meanwhile, I'll look up in my legal dictionary what headbop means so that I'm fully versed on your argument. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having.

That was Amy Swearer, Senior Legal Fellow at Advancing American Freedom, and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.