These gun-rights groups got the response to Alex Pretti's killing right

After the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis, the Trump administration's first instinct was to spin the killing as legitimate because Pretti had been armed. That strategy is failing, and an important reason why is that the country's premier gun-rights organizations refused to go along. At a time when issue-based activist groups increasingly bind themselves to one party or the other, that show of constitutional principle is worth applauding.

Pretti, who had a concealed-carry permit and no criminal record, appears to have tried to intervene after a federal agent shoved a woman toward the sidewalk on Saturday. A scrum followed in which he was pepper-sprayed, knocked to the ground and shot multiple times in the back. Videos show he had not drawn his handgun, which was taken from him before he was shot.