A gun shot perforation in a window pane can be seen in front of a makeshift memorial for Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minn., January 26, 2026.(Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)
That’s not what Alex Pretti was.
Alex Pretti wasn’t killed while “protesting.”
This is the most common description of what he was doing on that Minneapolis street last weekend when he got in a confrontation with federal immigration agents that ended in his tragic shooting.
But if Pretti was merely a protester, we need to change the definition.
A protester, as typically understood, is someone who is making a point, often as part of a gathering of other like-minded people and, usually but not always, in opposition to something.
A protester might hold a sign outside a coal-fired power plant calling for it to shut down.
He might go to Union Square Park in New York City to hear speeches from bullhorns whenever something happens that outrages the left.
He might march against the Iraq War, or the Vietnam War — or in favor of Hamas.
This kind of activity is not to everyone’s taste — personally, I hate the drums and the chants — but there is no doubt that it is a legitimate form of political advocacy.
Depending on the cause, it can even be admirable.
What we are seeing in Minneapolis, though, is often quite different. Run-of-the-mill protesters don’t seek out federal agents and harass and obstruct them. They don’t follow and block their vehicles or establish a robust communications network to deploy resources creating maximum disruption of their operations.
We all are very familiar with how clashes between protesters and police usually go: A contingent of cops faces an unruly crowd along a skirmish line, and the advance guard of the crowd gets more and more aggressive, or the cops begin to move in to disperse the crowd. One way or the other, mayhem ensues. We’ve all seen it hundreds of times.
This is different. Opponents of ICE are, in an organized effort, tracking agents and showing up at operations to stop them from doing their job or make it as difficult as possible. This is more a form of low-level, (by and large) nonviolent insurgency than conventional protest.
And Pretti was part of this effort. It’s more accurate to describe him as an agitator, or — depending on the level of his involvement in the ICE network — even as an operator, than a protester.
The point is to influence events, by direct involvement, rather than simply observe or protest them.
It is telling that, according to CNN, Pretti was injured in a prior confrontation with ICE agents a week before his death.
The fact of the matter is that if Pretti had indeed been only protesting last weekend, he’d still be alive today. He would have stayed on the sidewalk and held up a sign, or chanted “ICE go home,” and the officers might have been annoyed, but they presumably wouldn’t have interacted with him, and there wouldn’t have been any encounter with the potential to go catastrophically wrong.
The calculation in Minneapolis has been that this kind of benign activity is less effective than direct action, and unfortunately — with public opinion swinging against Operation Metro Surge and Trump apparently looking for a climb-down — this assessment looks to be accurate.
We can disagree about the desirability of the goal that Pretti was pursuing, but there’s no doubt about how he was pursuing it, and it wasn’t through conventional protest.
I provided some suggestions for NRA Voters in my last article here, but many have asked for a dedicated Election Article, so here we go.
This year’s NRA elections are both historic and somewhat inconsequential. Historic in that Voting Members will be, I believe, electing more Directors than in any election in the NRA’s 154-year history. Inconsequential in that I believe all 37 of the candidates will be elected or appointed before the end of the year, so what’s the point?
I definitely don’t want to discourage anyone from voting, but your vote really won’t make a whole lot of difference this year, except that your vote could help decide which of the 37 candidates get full three-year terms on the Board, and which ones will only get one or two-year terms – or less.
There’s also a better chance than usual for a write-in candidate to make the cut, so I’d like to bring one of those to your attention right now.
I’m urging every Voting Member of the NRA to turn your ballot over and write-in:
Charles Rowe, Wadsworth, Ohio.
If you’re an old school “Bullet Voter,” you can leave it at that and return your ballot with only that one vote on it, but there are several others I’d like to see guaranteed a three-year term, so read on for more about what’s going on and who I’m recommending.
The reason for the unprecedented number of seats up for election this year is an unprecedented number of resignations from the Board over the past year, especially over the past couple of months.
And the reason for many of those resignations has a lot to do with the kerfuffle between the NRA and the Board of Trustees of the NRA Foundation, which I discussed at some length on AmmoLand.
The short version is that while the NRA Board of Directors was realigning with “reformers” taking control, a group of long-time Directors who were also serving on the Board of Trustees of the NRA Foundation were quietly maneuvering to separate that organization from the NRA.
In the process, they changed the Foundation’s Articles of Incorporation to allow additional Trustees, and the Foundation’s Bylaws to allow the Board of Trustees to name people to their Board, taking that power away from the NRA Board of Directors.
This was all done under cover of the settlement agreement reached between the NRA Foundation, the NRA, and the District of Columbia, in a lawsuit launched by the DC AG back in 2020. The suit contended that the Foundation had been improperly providing money to the NRA above and beyond what they were supposed to be doing under their charter and DC’s nonprofit laws.
The settlement agreement doesn’t mandate the dramatic separation, but the language leaves open that interpretation, in a Bill Clinton-esque “what the definition of ‘is’ is” way.
Folks who have followed the trials and tribulations of the NRA over the past five or six years will have a better understanding of the situation when I mention that this effort was led on the Foundation side by Tom King, Charles Cotton, David Coy, and Bob Barr.
King, who was the hold-over President of the Foundation Board, failed in his reelection bid for the NRA Board in 2025, then orchestrated the coup, and brought Cotton, Coy, and Barr and others onto the Foundation Board to back his play. All of them, and several others who were in the “Old Guard” faction of the NRA Board, subsequently resigned their seats on the NRA Board.
The good news is that there are now no longer any of the most influential members of the “Old Guard” LaPierre loyalists serving on the NRA Board. The bad news is that most of those are now serving on the Foundation Board.
If you’re a Voting Member, which means a Life Member or an Annual Member with at least five consecutive years of membership, you should have received a ballot in your most recent NRA magazine.
I don’t know all of the new candidates that are on your ballot this year. If you know and trust someone I don’t mention, go ahead and give them a vote, but here are the folks who are up for reelection that I am most keen to see do well in this year’s polling:
1. Charles Hiltunen 2. David Raney 3. Amanda Suffecool 4. Mark Vaughan
Again, if you prefer to “Bullet Vote,” these four, along with a write-in for Charles Rowe, are all you need, but if you want to go further, here are my next choices for reelection:
5. Ted Carter 6. Richard Fairburn 7. Richard Todd Figard 8. Robert Mansell 9. Mark Robinson 10. Todd Vandermyde 11. James Wallace
Some of these were just appointed to the Board to fill vacancies. I think they all bring value to the Board, so consider adding them to your ballot, along with Charles Rowe and the others.
Finally, there are a few of the new candidates that I either know personally or who have been highly recommended to me by people I trust. They are:
12. Robert Beckman 13. James D’Cruz 14. Jacqueline Janes 15. Huey Laugesen 16. Randy Luth
That’s a pretty full dance card, and I would recommend not going much beyond these 16, plus Charles Rowe as a write-in.
With so many candidates and what I assume will be somewhat confusing instructions (I haven’t received my ballot yet, so I haven’t seen the instructions), it would be particularly easy to inadvertently vote for too many candidates this year, invalidating your entire ballot, so whether you go with just my recommendations or a full slate, be extra careful not to over-vote, and base that on what it says on the ballot instructions, not anything I say about the election.
Remember that a write-in is a vote, so double-check your count and follow the voting instructions very precisely. Don’t forget to sign the carrier envelope.
My personal ballot will probably only have five or six votes, including Charles Rowe on the back, but I wanted to give you more to consider.
As to my push to write-in Charles Rowe, here’s why. Charles was on the ballot last year and was included among the “Strong NRA” candidates endorsed by the “Old Guard.” That was a pretty solid strike against him, but after reading his bio, I recognized that he was an excellent candidate and I actually voted for him in last year’s election.
Not only is he a world-class competitive shooter and Captain of the US Rifle Team, he’s also an experienced corporate executive with extensive board experience. That’s a winning combination for NRA members.
With all of the resignations late last year, Chuck was invited to join the Board as one of the candidates who didn’t win a seat in the previous election, so he joined us as a member of the Board for our January meetings in Virginia, where I got a chance to chat with him and discuss NRA history and his ideas for moving forward.
This reinforced my belief that he is exactly the type of quality candidate NRA members need serving them on the NRA Board.
While a write-in campaign is a very unlikely long-shot, I’ve had a few successful long-shots over the years, including hitting the White Buffalo at the Whittington Center (1,123 yards) with a .458 SOCOM, so I think this is actually possible.
If we don’t make it this year, we can make sure he’s on the ballot and gets elected next year.
White Buffalo at the Whittington Center (1,123 yards)
I believe the NRA is now in good hands, moving in the right direction. There’s still much work to be done, but we’re on a good tack. There really are no “bad” choices on this year’s ballot, so just vote for the ones you know and trust, or that come highly recommended by others you know and trust.
Be very careful not to vote for too many. Read and follow the voting instructions carefully. I haven’t made it to the PO Box to pick up my Ballot Issue of the magazine yet, so I’m not even sure how many candidates they’re allowing you to vote for on a single ballot.
My recommendation is to just vote for a handful of your favorites. That increases the odds of that handful getting the 3-year seats. If you do decide to vote for more, remember that your write-in vote(s) is (are) included in your total, so don’t exceed the limit or else your entire ballot will be ruled invalid.
Thank you for helping us get the NRA on the right track and caring enough to keep working for our Association. Please don’t forget to write in Charles Rowe, Wadsworth, Ohio, on the back of the ballot, and if you make it to the Annual Meetings and Exhibits, April 16 through 19 in Houston, be sure to look for me in the NRA booth or out on the show floor.
Reps. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) announced Friday their re-introduction of legislation to limit the online sale of ammunition.
A press release from Mfume’s office indicates the bill, called the Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act, “would require federally licensed ammunition dealers to confirm the identity of individuals who arrange to purchase ammunition over the internet by verifying a photo I.D. in person.”
The legislation would “also require ammunition vendors to report any sales of more than 1,000 rounds within five consecutive days to the U.S. Attorney General, if the person purchasing ammunition is not a licensed dealer.”
Rep. Mfume commented on the legislation, saying, “Since we last introduced this bill, the crisis of mass shootings has continued unabated. We’ve been living with this scourge of violence for so many years as assault weapons and enormous amounts of ammunition continue to fall into the hands of diabolical people.”
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He added, “Mass shootings are not going to stop on their own, and we cannot keep waiting for the next one to occur.”
Rep. Coleman said:
Regulating online ammunition sales is a commonsense step to countering the number of mass shootings we see every year.
This legislation closes the loophole that makes tragedies like these so unfortunately common. Public safety must come before convenience for an unregulated market: Americans send us to Washington because it is our job to protect them, not mourn them.
The online ammo sales gun control bill has 17 co-sponsors.
2026 NRA Board of Directors Ballo
