Trump administration officials’ suggestion that Alex Pretti should not have brought a legally carried handgun to a Minneapolis protest has opened a rare rift with gun rights groups, creating election-year risks for Republicans with one of their most loyal voting blocs.

Gun rights groups are major donors to Republican political campaigns, are effective in turning out supporters, and their members are reliable voters.

Several of Trump’s officials drew swift pushback from gun rights groups for their stance after Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, was shot dead by federal agents on Saturday. 

Pretti had a license to carry a concealed weapon, and the Minneapolis police chief said he has seen no evidence that Pretti brandished the weapon before he was shot multiple times.

Bryan Strawser, the group’s chairman and a Republican, told Reuters the administration was backtracking on the Second Amendment - the constitutional right to keep and bear arms - and that could hurt his party going into the November midterm elections that will decide control of Congress.

In defense of the agents, Trump, FBI Director Kash Patel, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Gregory Bovino, a senior Border Patrol official, all said Pretti should not have been carrying a gun.

Gun rights groups, including the politically influential National Rifle Association, however, countered that Pretti had simply been exercising his right to carry a firearm in public. They argued that the administration’s suggestion that his right to carry a gun depends on the setting - and does not extend to protests - runs against a bedrock principle of conservative politics: the right to keep and bear arms.

The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus called Patel’s comments “completely incorrect on Minnesota law.”