Brandon Herrera, a well-known gun influencer with more than 4 million followers on YouTube, said in a video posted this week that while it’s unfortunate that Pretti died, in the end the fault was hers.

“Pretti didn’t deserve to die, but it wasn’t a baseless killing either,” Herrera said, adding that there was no evidence that Pretti’s intent was to disrupt ICE operations. “If you’re interfering with arrests and things like that, that’s a crime. If you get in the way of a fucking officer, that can escalate into physical force, whether it’s arresting you or pushing you away, which can lead to a fight, which, if you’re armed, can lead to a fatal shooting.” He described the situation as “lawful but terrifying.”

With Herrera in the video is ex-cop and fellow gun influencer Cody Garrett, known online as the Donut Operator.

Both men took the opportunity to mock immigrants, with Herrera saying that “every news outlet is going to this because it’s the current thing and they’re going to ignore the 12 drunk drivers who killed you know, American citizens yesterday who were all illegals or H-1B or whatever.”

Herrera also mentioned his “friend” Kyle Rittenhouse, who has been at the center of much of the debate surrounding the shooting.

On August 25, 2020, Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, traveled from his home in Illinois to a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, brandishing an AR-15-style rifle, claiming he was there to protect local businesses. He killed two people and shot another in the arm that night.

Critics of ICE’s actions in Minneapolis were quick to highlight what they saw as the hypocrisy of the right to defend Rittenhouse and attack Pretti.

“Kyle Rittenhouse is a conservative hero for walking into a protest actually brandishing a weapon, but this guy who has a legal permit to carry and has already got his gun is for some people an instigator, if he’s actually going to help a woman,” Jessica Tarlov, a Democratic strategist, said. said on Fox News this week.

Rittenhouse also joined the debate, write X: “The right way to approach law enforcement when armed,” above a picture of himself with his hands up in front of police after he killed two people. He added to another post that “ICE is messed up.”

The claim that Pretti was to blame was repeated in private Facebook groups run by armed militiasaccording to data shared by WIRED with the Tech Transparency Project, as well as extremist Telegram channels.

“I feel sorry for him and his family,” wrote a member of a Facebook group called American Patriots. “But my question is, why did he go to these riots armed with a gun and extra magazines if he didn’t plan to use them?”

Some extremist groups, such as the far-right Boogaloo movement, have been highly critical of the administration’s comments about being armed at a protest.

“To the ‘don’t bring a gun to a protest’ crowd, fuck you,” a member of a private Boogaloo group wrote on Facebook this week. “To those fucking turncoats who think disarmament is the answer and don’t think it’s going to happen to you, fuck you.