Amid the background of federal agents shooting to death two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis and President Donald Trump subsequently declaring, “you can’t have guns,” a Marine veteran who served in Iraq is asking, where are the pro-Second Amendment “Don’t Tread on Me” activists now?

In an opinion piece for The Hill, Jos Joseph explains the effect that the 1993 federal government raid in Waco, Texas, had on him as a teen, when he “watched as federal agents, dressed up like commandos, tried to storm a religious compound in Texas. A shootout and then a siege ensued in which the government used the same psyops operations on Americans as they had on Panamanian Gen. Manuel Noriega.”

He says that he was “baffled by the government’s actions and willingness to escalate things to the point of using commando-style tactics before exhausting other options,” and as a result, he “would understand why people didn’t trust the government, why they advocated for the Second Amendment, and why they warned me about the dangers that an unchecked politician could do to American citizens.”

He then blasts “self-described libertarians, Second Amendment advocates, Punisher logo wearing tough guys, and ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flag wavers” who “wilt like flowers when it comes time to actually standing up for the Bill of Rights.”

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He then turns to the crisis in Minnesota.

“The Department of Homeland Security immediately tried to control the messaging,” he exclaimed, “that somehow this man who was legally permitted to carry a gun was killed for carrying a gun.”

“I think about all the ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ people and wonder, why are they so silent?” Joseph asks.

And, “why are some putting restrictions on the Second Amendment now? You can carry a gun but not magazines? You can’t carry more than one magazine? You can’t bring a gun to a protest if you are a Democrat?”

Joseph did not specifically mention President Donald Trump, who said on Tuesday that Alex Pretti, the VA ICU nurse shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis over the weekend, was carrying magazines.

“He had a gun,” Trump said, as Reuters reported. “I don’t like that. He had two fully loaded magazines. That’s a lot of bad stuff.”

Joseph writes, “Over the years, I was told by my conservative friends to be worried about Big Government,” then laments, “I guess none of that applies anymore. The killings of Alex Pretti, Renee Good and others in ICE custody should be reprehensible to any decent, patriotic American. But the silence is deafening from those who cried loudest over government tyranny.”

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Image by Fibonacci Blue via Flickr and a Creative Commons license

After pledging to deescalate tensions in Minnesota, President Donald Trump kicked off Wednesday by taking aim at the mayor of Minneapolis, asserting — incorrectly — that declining to enforce federal immigration laws is unlawful.

Legal analysts and administration critics have warned that the moves the president made this week in the wake of the second deadly shooting of a U.S. citizen by federal agents were simply a change in tone — not in strategy or tactics, and not an actual pivot. Trump has recalled Greg Bovino, the head of Operation Metro Surge, from Minneapolis, and sent in border czar Tom Homan.

“Surprisingly,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “Mayor Jacob Frey just stated that, ‘Minneapolis does not, and will not, enforce Federal Immigration Laws.’ This is after having had a very good conversation with him.”

“Could somebody in his inner sanctum please explain that this statement is a very serious violation of the Law, and that he is PLAYING WITH FIRE!” the president declared.

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The president declared Frey’s stance is unlawful but legal experts note that cities and states generally cannot be forced to carry out federal immigration enforcement.

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance noted that “the feds can’t ‘commandeer’ state law enforcement resources to execute their policies.”

She also called the president’s statement, “More evidence Trump isn’t changing course on mass deportations.”

Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney offered some additional insight.

“Trump could not have designed a better statement to convince Judge Menendez that Operation Metro Surge is meant to coerce policy changes,” Cheney wrote.

He noted that courts have “ruled repeatedly” that the federal government “cannot coerce states to enforce federal law.”

“Nor is it illegal for states to decline to do so,” Cheney added.

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“And the menacing ‘playing with fire’ is exactly the kind of statement (‘retribution is coming’) that worked against the administration in court earlier this week,” he added.

Indeed, ABC News interviewed the president on Tuesday and reported that Trump was suggesting federal agents would take a “more relaxed” approach in Minnesota after the two deadly shootings.

Trump said, “we can start doing maybe a little bit more relaxed,” and, “we’d like to finish the job and finish it well, and I think we can do it in a de-escalated form.”

ABC called it “a shift in tone.”

The New Republic’s Greg Sargent wrote on Wednesday, “The media narrative that Trump is ‘pivoting’ and ‘deescalating’ on his ICE raids … is wildly overstated. As long as the military occupations and the treatment of US cities as enemy territory continue, there’s no pivot. It’s that simple.”

“Trump wants to appear eager to minimize clashes between his govt militias and protesters. But he doesn’t want them to stop doing the things that are causing the clashes in the first place,” he continued. “There’s no Trump ‘pivot’ until we see real investigations into the government’s killings and real accountability for them.”

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Image via Reuters 

The most hardline conservative bloc of House Republicans is calling on President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota if he deems it necessary, days after federal agents in Minneapolis shot and killed a second U.S. citizen in a matter of weeks — and just hours after the president, referring to protesters, declared, “you can’t have guns.”

In an unsigned letter to Trump, the House Freedom Caucus said it was encouraging the president to use “all tools necessary — including the Insurrection Act,” to “maintain order in the face of unlawful obstructions and assemblages that prevent the enforcement of laws by the United States.”

The Minneapolis protests have been largely peaceful.

The Freedom Caucus also urged the president to maintain “necessary law enforcement including ICE in Minneapolis.” Some have suggested that Trump may have been looking for an off-ramp, or a means to wind down “Operation Metro Surge.”

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The group also called on Trump to end funding for sanctuary cities, and to ensure that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is “funded fully along with all remaining appropriation bills.”

Democrats in the Senate are demanding that the DHS funding bill be separated from other legislative funding vehicles, which would require unlikely House approval.

The Freedom Caucus, led by hard-core conservative Republican Andy Harris, threatened to take extreme action should Democrats, they said, shut down the federal government. A partial government shutdown is possible after Friday.

On Monday, far-right political commentator and strategist Steve Bannon, along with Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren, called on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.

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Image via Reuters