At the Stock & Barrel Gun Club’s two locations near Minneapolis, the classes for people seeking a permit to carry a firearm almost always draw large crowds.
“It’s usually in the hundreds,” David Taylor, the club’s CEO, said.
But since immigration enforcement agents flooded the city, sparking clashes in the streets and the killing of two protesters, interest in the classes has only grown. In just the past two weeks, Taylor said, his club has received four times the usual number of sign-ups.
That does not appear to be an anomaly. Five firearm instructors in the Minneapolis area told NBC News they have seen a similar trend. The sudden interest, they say, is a reflection of the fear and uneasiness that has gripped the region amid the ongoing turmoil in the streets.
“It’s very typical whenever there is a black swan incident,” Taylor said, using a term for unexpected events with far-reaching consequences.
“People tend to panic and want to run out to get their permits,” he added.
To obtain a permit to carry in Minnesota, a person must submit an application to their county sheriff and provide documentation that they have been trained by a certified instructor in the safe use of a pistol. State law allows for the weapon to be concealed.
R. Steven Rogers, who owns a private security company in Minneapolis and offers firearm training on the side, said he has received a burst of calls from people inquiring about his permit-to-carry classes.
“Most are people afraid of ICE,” Rogers said, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “There are some who are afraid of the generalized violence.”
He has also received calls from two people interested in hiring security guards to protect their homes, which he said was “very unusual.”
Tensions began to rise in Minneapolis earlier this month with the arrival of roughly 3,000 federal agents focused on immigration enforcement. The fatal shootings of two American citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37 — by federal immigration agents have only ratcheted up the tensions.
Pretti’s killing has also rattled some Second Amendment advocates in the Minneapolis area.
An intensive care unit nurse, Pretti was recording federal agents with his phone Saturday, when bystander video captured him getting in between some officers and a woman who had been pushed to the ground. Several officers sprayed him with a chemical agent before pulling him down to the pavement, and one emerged from the scrum with a gun taken from Pretti’s holster, the video shows.
An officer yelled “He’s got a gun!” multiple times before a Border Patrol agent then opened fire at point-blank range, according to a Department of Homeland Security report. A second officer also opened fire, the report added.
The report did not make any mention of Pretti having attacked officers or brandished a gun, as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed in the aftermath of the shooting.
White House adviser Stephen Miller had been quick to label Pretti as a “would-be assassin.” Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino said Pretti planned to “massacre” federal agents. FBI Director Kash Patel said that “you cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines, to any sort of protest.”
Those comments, particularly Patel’s, did not go over well among the leadership at the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, an advocacy group.
“It’s just factually inaccurate,” said Bryan Strawser, chairman of the caucus.
“It’s not illegal to bring a loaded gun to a protest,” he said. “It happens all the time.”
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Strawser was referring to Minnesota specifically. But there have been prominent recent cases in other states.
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Kyle Rittenhouse brought a loaded rifle to a protest in Wisconsin over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man. Rittenhouse fatally shot two people and was later found not guilty of all five charges related to his actions. Unlike Pretti, he was hailed as a hero by conservative politicians.
Local officials have said Pretti had a permit to carry his gun, which has been a subject of interest among firearm enthusiasts in the area and beyond. It appears to be a Sig Sauer P320-AXG Combat, with a detachable sight, according to multiple experts.
The pistol is popular among law enforcement and military veterans. But with a price tag of roughly $1,000, experts say it’s more expensive than many other 9 mm pistols and is larger.
“That is not the sort of gun you would expect someone who is untrained to carry,” said Scott Sweetow, a former top official with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
John McConkey, president of The Modern Sportsman gun shop, said in an email: “I can confirm the Sig Sauer pistol recovered at the scene was obtained legally with a background check.”
Federal officials have said that at the time of the shooting Pretti was not carrying a government-issued photo ID or permit, which are both required under Minnesota law when in possession of a firearm. Failing to produce them when asked by police is punishable by a $25 fine.
Some of the firearms experts interviewed by NBC News questioned why Pretti would go out with a gun and no ID if his intention was to engage with, or even just observe, federal agents patrolling the city.
Strawser, of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, pushed back against the idea that Pretti was in any way to blame for his death.
“It is not a crime — it’s an infraction like a traffic ticket,” Strawser said, referring to Pretti’s lack of an ID. “So I’m not sure that this is relevant to the shooting at all unless someone is looking for an excuse to blame the victim here.”
Erik Pakieser, a Minneapolis-based firearms instructor and law enforcement veteran, said he had a permit-to-carry class scheduled for the day after the shooting.
“As we were going into last week, I had only six people signed up,” Pakieser said. “I ended up having 25 people in the class on that Sunday. It essentially quadrupled in size.”
“What I am seeing consistently,” he added, “is people who are historically not interested in guns — or even opposed to gun ownership — seeking that out now because they’re looking out the window and seeing what’s going on and they’re saying this is no longer theoretical.”
It’s not unusual for firearms classes to draw a flood of new members during periods of unrest. The same thing happened in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, one of the Minneapolis-area instructors said.
He was among two others who spoke to NBC News on the condition of anonymity out of fear of being targeted by anti-ICE protesters.
“In any other time, I would be very willing to help you out,” the veteran instructor with more than 25 years of experience said. “Right now, it’s just too dicey.”
