Jeanine Pirro sparks MAGA fury for threatening jail time for lawful gun owners traveling to DC: ‘Come and take it!’

Jeanine Pirro is currently under fire from gun rights advocates and pro-Second Amendment MAGA personalities after declaring this week that anyone who enters the District of Columbia with a gun – even if they are lawfully allowed to carry a firearm – could face jail time.

“Come and Take it,” one GOP congressman reacted, while another right-wing media host said he was “ABSOLUTELY outraged” over Pirro’s stance.

Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. and a former Fox News host, made her comments just days after Donald Trump sparked outrage from pro-gun groups and conservatives for insisting that Alex Pretti shouldn’t have been carrying a handgun when he was killed by immigration enforcement agents last month.

Pretti, who was licensed to carry a concealed firearm, was disarmed by officers before agents shot him multiple times in the back seconds after tackling him to the ground during an encounter in Minnesota, leading to nationwide “ICE Out” protests, demands for the defunding of the Department of Homeland Security and calls for DHS chief Kristi Noem to be impeached.

“I don’t like that he had a gun, I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines, that’s a lot of bad stuff. And despite that, I’d say it’s very unfortunate,” Trump, who has boasted of having the “most pro-Second Amendment administration in history,” declared last month. “You can't have guns. You can't walk in with guns,” the president said in a separate remark.

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During an appearance on her old network, Pirro bragged about the dramatic fall in homicides in Washington, telling anchor Martha MacCallum that the “secret sauce” behind the drop in violent crime was the seizure of firearms by law enforcement.

“It’s about taking guns off the street. Since the search happened there have been 9,500 arrests and almost 1,000 guns taken off the street,” Pirro said. “When you do that, those guns cannot be used in homicides or assaults with deadly weapons or in any kind of carjacking or any kind of robbery.”

At the same time, the one-time star of The Five added that it wasn’t just about seizing guns from criminals. She also intended to prevent anyone from entering the city with a lawfully obtained firearm from another state – and threatened jail time for those who violated that edict.

“You bring a gun into the District, you mark my words, you're going to jail,” Pirro stated. “I don't care if you have a license in another district and I don't care if you're a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this district, count on going to jail and hope you get the gun back. And that makes all the difference.”

MacCallum, meanwhile, applauded her former network colleague’s remarks, saying it was “amazing how accountability works” and that “it puts a different message in people’s heads.” While D.C. doesn’t honor out-of-state concealed carry permits, non-residents can apply for a concealed carry license if they have a permit from another state. Additionally, all firearms carried in the district must be registered with the city’s police department.

Even before Pirro prompted more blowback from conservatives over her stance, pro-gun groups and Second Amendment advocates – which overwhelmingly vote Republican – had already threatened to sit out the upcoming midterms over the president’s comments about the Pretti shooting.

Therefore, with Pirro’s declaration once again revealing the shifting tone from Team Trump on gun control since the Pretti shooting, which has seen FBI Director Kash Patel and Noem join Trump in making similar comments about carrying firearms in public, it didn’t take long for the former Fox News star to swiftly draw heat from the gun rights crowd.

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“Jeanine Pirro threatening to arrest people for carrying in D.C., even if they are law-abiding and licensed, shows how broken and out of touch these gun laws are. Unacceptable and intolerable comments by a sitting U.S. attorney,” the National Association for Gun Rights said in a statement, adding that her remarks proved the need for a “Real Constitutional Carry” across the nation.

“The District of Columbia has been ‘shall issue’ since 2017 when the requirement that you must have a “good reason“ to carry a handgun was struck down,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) proclaimed. “Non-residents can obtain a permit in D.C. — don’t ask me how I know.”

Sharing a post from the Gun Owner of America, Rep. Greg Stuebe (R-FL) pointed out that he brings his “gun into the district every week” and has a license in both D.C. and Florida. “Come and Take it,” Steube added, directing his social media post at Pirro.

Eric Bolling, a former Fox News cohort of Pirro’s who now works for MAGA channel Real America’s Voice, said that while he respected his ex-colleague’s legal opinions, he was “ABSOLUTELY outraged about her desire to change ALREADY onerous and overly-restrictive D.C. gun laws to suit her personal ambitions.” Additionally, he took aim at MacCallum for “not checking her on the spot.”

“The GOP Leadership is doing everything it can to keep Second Amendment voters from showing up in November,” conservative radio host Erick Erickson tweeted in response to Pirro’s remarks.

“It’s very scary that so many in the Trump administration have become Second Amendment hostile,” right-wing pundit John Cardillo wrote on X. “Pirro is a NY ‘Republican.’ They are indistinguishable from Democrats on guns.”

At the same time, liberals and progressives mocked both Pirro and the MAGA movement as a whole over the Trump administration seemingly taking a left-wing turn when it comes to gun control and restrictions – noting that it was Republicans who had long warned about Democrats seizing firearms from citizens.

“Old enough to remember the ‘Obama is going to grab your guns’ hysteria. Turns out it was the Trump White House,” Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA) pointed out, tagging the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America in his post on X.

“I never imagined Republicans would be further to the left on guns than I am, but here we are,” Shannon Watts, the founder of gun violence prevention group Moms Demand Action, tweeted.