Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes issued a warning this week that gun policies in her state could lead to catastrophe as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers under Donald Trump ramp up their increasingly violent, illiberal and racist crackdown on immigrants and their allies.
And some of the president’s supporters are quite unhappy about it.
In an interview with Phoenix’s NBC affiliate, the Democratic attorney general said Arizona’s “Stand Your Ground” law — which allows people to use lethal force to defend themselves from imminent danger rather than flee — could lead to shootouts if Trump’s often masked, frequently unidentifiable immigration agents act in the violent fashion that has been documented nationwide.
To be clear, Mayes was not advocating that anyone carry out violence against immigration authorities or impede their work. In fact, when asked whether she was giving license for people to shoot ICE agents, she said, “Absolutely not.”
But she also noted the confusion that could arise:
If you’re being attacked by someone who is not identified as a peace officer, how do you know? … By the way, I’m a gun owner. If somebody comes at me wearing a mask and I can’t tell whether they’re a police officer, what am I supposed to do? Mayes was issuing a warning about the risky combination of federal government overreach and Arizona’s gun laws — not a threat against ICE. Nonetheless, some in the MAGA movement — influencers and lawmakers, mainly — chose to frame her comments as menacing. The irony here is noteworthy. Many conservatives, such as Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, frequently tout gun ownership as a necessary bulwark against federal government overreach. The MAGA movement tends to lionize people who take up arms against purported federal overreach, and they even have flags with cutesy phrases to promote the idea that the federal authorities will be met with violent force if they infringe on Americans’ rights. Yet according to conservatives’ twisted logic, a Democratic official recognizing reality in her gun-loving state is beyond the pale.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. 
