In Minneapolis, MN, on Jan. 24, the ongoing politically partisan fight over Second Amendment rights collided with a tragic and avoidable shooting. Thirty-seven-year-old Alex Pretti was shot and killed after getting into an altercation with federal agents conducting an immigration enforcement operation. Pretti, reportedly a concealed carry permit holder, was armed with a semi-automatic pistol at the time. Details are murky, but the official story does not seem to align with video evidence. However, there are different interpretations of different videos taken by various witnesses.
In the aftermath of the incident, social media blew up. The views expressed about the shooting of Alex Pretti, from both sides of the political divide, have been startling, inasmuch as they represent curious departures from the respective values each tribe claims.
Does anyone know, definitively, that the federal agent who shot Pretti acted within the law and agency regulations? Was he justified in taking Pretti’s life? At this time, perhaps only the agents present at the scene and maybe any of their superiors who have reviewed available bodycam footage know the answer to that question.
For everyone else, this is an “if … then” exercise in speculation. If Pretti brandished his pistol, or even reached for it, then he represented an imminent deadly threat, and the agent who shot him acted correctly. If he had not drawn his weapon – or if agents had already taken it from him, as one video clip appears to show – then this was practically an execution.
Liberty Nation News’ James Fite asked the crucial question: “Did Pretti have his gun in hand, or even on his person, and was he a viable threat when ICE agents shot him – or at all?”
Principles and the Ol’ Switcheroo
Curiously, people on the political left are now defending the Second Amendment. Alex Pretti had a constitutional right to carry a gun, they are saying – and that’s the first time, and maybe the last, they will ever make such an observation, correct though it may be. These are the people who have spent years lecturing gun owners about the dangers posed to decent society by armed civilians.
On the flip side, some on the right are making glib observations along the lines of, well, this guy shouldn’t have taken a loaded gun to a protest, or, yes, of course, a federal agent shot him – he had a gun. The same people who usually stand up for the right to keep and bear arms conclude that, on this occasion, being in possession of a firearm justifies being shot by “the authorities.”
The other statements in defense of the agent who shot Pretti are equally baffling. Maybe Pretti shouldn’t have gone there; perhaps he shouldn’t have been filming ICE agents. Neither of those things is illegal nor constitutes a threat. Pretti had every right to be there and to film. What he didn’t have the right to do was obstruct or otherwise hamper federal agents in the conduct of their duty. Was he doing so or had he already done so prior to his deadly confrontation? No one on the outside of this situation knows.
The Final Moments of Alex Pretti
Alex Pretti was using his cellphone to video an altercation between federal agents and protesters. He also appeared to be attempting to help a woman who seemed in some distress, for reasons unknown. That much appears clear. Then federal agents approached him and, almost immediately, a physical struggle ensued. Pretti is forced to the ground, and a few seconds later, several shots are fired.
Did Pretti say or do something that caused the agents to react with force to subdue him? That is not clear. At what point the agents realized he was armed is also not obvious – and whether he reached for his pistol is not easily discernible. We do not even yet know whether Pretti himself discharged his firearm.
One would hope the agent who shot him had reason, in that moment, to sincerely believe his life or the lives of his colleagues were in imminent danger. The mere fact that Pretti had a gun, apparently in his waistband – probably in what is known as an inside-the-waistband holster – does not warrant being shot. As Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie pointed out on X, “Carrying a firearm is not a death sentence, it’s a Constitutionally protected God-given right.”
It is strange indeed that, for perhaps the first time in the last 50 years, at least, a lot of progressives agree with this sentiment, and many conservatives do not.
Gun Rights for Me, But Not for Thee?
The reason it is vitally important to distinguish between a threat – someone brandishing a firearm or pointing one at people – and the non-threat of a civilian merely carrying a holstered firearm is clear, or should be to anyone who wishes to preserve Second Amendment rights.
If conservatives, Republicans, and Trump supporters decide, for partisan reasons, that Alex Pretti – one of the “bad guys” who decided to film ICE agents – deserved to be shot by federal agents (presumably the “good guys”) simply because he had a gun, then the Second Amendment would effectively be gutted. The very act of carrying a gun in public would henceforth be considered dangerous or threatening behavior.
Does law-abiding Bob Smith get shot by a police officer because he walks into his local grocery store with a handgun on his hip? Can the officer who shot him just say, in his defense, that Smith had a gun, so I judged him to be a threat?
Intent is also irrelevant – at least up to the point when an actual crime is committed. That hypothetical police officer who shot hypothetical Bob Smith couldn’t just say, oh, I’m pretty sure Smith intended to kill someone. And that is just as well, or the next step is a police state.
Alex Pretti, it appears, had his pistol plus two extra extended magazines, likely capable of holding 21 rounds, as opposed to the 17 rounds a standard magazine for that pistol holds. Altogether, then, he had maybe 63 or 64 rounds on his person. Does that mean he intended to engage federal agents in a gun battle? Perhaps. It could also mean Pretti just preferred to have as many rounds as possible available to him when he carried his weapon.
The Road to Lost Liberties
There is always a danger of abandoning one’s own principles and values when events set two politically opposed groups against one another. The left has now lost any credibility it might have had in its usual stance against privately owned firearms and the carrying of those weapons in public. On the right, however, it seems as though too many people, seeing Alex Pretti as “one of them” – the leftist rabble-rousing anti-ICE activists – have decided that, on this occasion, gun rights can be sidelined.
Do conservatives really want to play right into the hands of the gun-grabbers by agreeing that, from now on, civilians must leave their guns at home if federal agents are operating nearby?
That’s how civilian populations lose their liberties – when, for the sake of political expediency, one group is willing to temporarily suspend its usually jealously guarded freedoms.
As for Pretti’s death, every reasonable person should hope that, whether this shooting was justified or not, the truth comes out.
