There’s a lot of discussion about the right to carry a legally permitted gun like Alex Pretti was when he was shot and killed by immigration agents in Minneapolis — UW-Madison political science professor emeritus Howard Schweber unpacked the dual rights of citizens to possess and carry firearms with their right to protest.

Howard Schweber
Professor emeritus, UW-Madison Department of Political Science

• One day after Prett was killed, FBI Director Kash Patel said in an interview on a FOX News show that “no one who wants to be peaceful shows up at a protest with a firearm that is loaded with two full magazines.” Schweber said Patel’s statement would “get a failing grade in a freshman class in an undergraduate institution” because it is wrong on the law with the constitutional protection of the right to bear arms. What’s more, Schweber said the killing of Pretti on Jan. 24 and that of Renee Good on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis sparks fear among would-be protesters.
• Schweber: “I had a conversation with someone who was thinking of participating in protests in Madison today, and is not going to do so because they’re afraid. That person may be overreacting or not, but the intimidation and spreading of terror among protesters and potential protesters is not only very real, it certainly appears to be intentional. And that’s the, from a constitutional perspective, the biggest point of what’s going on here. It’s called the chilling effect. The police are acting in a way that are causing people to self-censor, to refrain from engaging in speech they’re entitled to engage in because they’re afraid of what might happen. It’s very small comfort to say, you know, a year or three down the line, a court might say the police officer was wrong in killing you. That’s not really something that relieves us of that sense of fear. And from a free speech perspective, we protect free speech in a way we don’t protect any other right. There’s no other category of constitutional right that we protect with this extra layer of protection. It’s not only that the government can’t prevent you from speaking freely, the government is not permitted to cause you to be afraid to speak freely, even if it might turn out you were within your rights ultimately at the end of the day. That’s that chilling effect. And there’s — from my perspective, or in my view — absolutely no question that the operation in Minnesota has crossed that line of chilling effect, and it’s far in the rearview mirror, and these operations are wildly unconstitutional.”

Watch new episodes of Here & Now at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays.