Let’s talk about the most recent lethal altercation which happened between leftwing agitators and ICE agents. The instance saw Alex Pretti, a 37-year old nurse, enter into a physical altercation with federal agents prior to being shot and killed. Unlike the last incident of this kind, which saw a woman disregard lawful orders and use her vehicle to hit an ICE agent prior to being shot, the Pretti incident seems a little less clear-cut.
I will attempt to address what happened, what should have happened, and what we know at this time. I will address the situation as we talk through two main points which I believe can simultaneously be true: Point 1 – Pretti acted foolishly, dangerously, illegally, and bares a significant portion of the blame for what happened. Point 2 – the ICE agent who shot Pretti used excessive force/overkill and the entire situation seems to be an example of costly miscommunication.
When Pretti chose to take to the streets to speak out and act out against ICE, he chose to illegally carry his 9mm handgun and two extra magazines in his waistband. “But Luke, I heard that Pretti was a legal gun owner with a concealed carry permit,” I can imagine some of you saying.
Yes, that is true. But as stated in a press conference following the shooting, Pretti was not carrying ID. When carrying a concealed handgun in Minnesota, two things are needed – your permit to carry and government issued ID, so that the legal ownership and lawful carrying of the gun can be verified. Stating that Pretti was legally carrying a handgun is like stating that a driver who is at the wheel without a license is a lawful driver – it is a dishonest half-truth. So let’s take the “He was legally carrying, I though you right wingers liked the 2nd amendment!” argument off the table.
Video evidence shows Pretti standing in the middle of the street, seemingly attempting to direct traffic. In the video, ICE agents in the vicinity appear to be trying to clear the street. The next thing we see in the available footage is that a woman runs up to confront an ICE agent, who shoves her away from himself and out of the roadway. Then, at 1:02 in the footage, Pretty initiates a physical altercation with the agent.
All parties seem to slip and fumble on the frozen asphalt and Pretti spends several seconds fighting against agents attempting to restrain him. At 1:51 of this video, we hear what seems to be an ICE agent saying, “He’s got a gun!” Almost simultaneously an agent in a gray coat removes the gun from Pretti’s waistband, and a moment later, another agent draws his weapon and shoots Pretti. More on these moments in Point 2.
To recap, Pretti was illegally carrying a firearm to a scene of protesting and rioting. While at the scene, Pretti sparked a physical altercation with legally armed ICE agents – and in the end, he was shot dead. This brings to mind a few thoughts. First, the viral comparisons to Kyle Rittenhouse are paper-thin at best. Kyle Rittenhouse was legally carrying a firearm and he did not instigate any physical altercations - much less with armed federal agents. Those are two huge differences when examining this scenario.
Second, I have seen multiple X users claim that Pretti was not armed or that he was lawfully armed – neither are true. Pretti was armed and he was carrying in an illegal manner. Finally, Pretti broke basically every rule that responsible firearm owners are taught on Day 1. Don’t illegally carry. Don’t start an altercation with law enforcement while carrying. Don’t resist arrest. Pretti did all three. That matters.
All of the above can be true and it can also be true that the ICE agent who shot Pretti made a bad decision, albeit an understandable one. Let’s go back to those moments just before and just after the shooting. All vantage points of the videos which we have show multiple agents jumping in to restrain Pretti – which is reasonable. But at some point less is more, and with so many agents in the mix, blocked vision and miscommunication can lead to some big mistakes.
And I think that is exactly what happened.
As addressed above, several things happen at almost the same exact time in the video footage: an agent yells that Pretti has a gun (which he does), Pretti thrashes around and reaches back (perhaps for his phone, perhaps for his gun, we may never know), an agent in Gray finds and removes Pretti’s weapon, and another agent circles around and shoots Pretti.
Snap your fingers four times in rapid succession – that is about the timespan in which all the above actions take place. There is a leftwing narrative that ICE disarmed Pretti so that they could execute him – that seems absurd to a soberminded viewer. The ICE agent who disarms Pretti and the ICE agent who shoot Pretti seem to be obscured by other bodies in the scuffle and do not have the time to communicate nor do they have the visual appearance of communicating at all.
My guess is that this is what happened: Pretti started a physical confrontation. ICE agents jumped in to restrain him and he resisted. While Pretti was thrashing on the ground, one of the agents saw his illegally concealed weapon and yelled that he had a gun, a moment later another agent found the firearm, grabbed it, and turned away from the scene to safely remove the weapon from reach of the combatants. Around the same time, another agent saw Pretti reaching toward his waistband and, having heard that Pretti was armed, the agent opened fire.
I think that’s basically it – a bad judgement call both by Pretti and by ICE, slippery, disorienting, and chaotic conditions due to weather and screeching protestors, and a failure of communication between agents in the span of several seconds. This theory is supported by the fact that immediately following the shooting, and ICE agent asks, “Where’s the gun?”. ICE acted on the fact that Pretti was armed but all agents were not on the same page when Pretti was disarmed mid-fight. So, did ICE make mistakes? Yes, I think they did. Did they murder or execute Pretti? No, I do not believe it is fair to say so.
One final note is that Pretti appears to have been shot about 10 times – this is reckless overkill in my opinion. Pretti was on the ground and the first few shots seem to have significantly contacted him – 10 shots is a lot. Additionally, those shots could easily have hit other bystanding agents or civilians. Again, this is not an indictment of ICE as a whole nor is it a justification for Pretti’s bad decisions, I am just calling it as I see it.
Some of the most important things you can do when interacting with a person regarding a contentious issue is to establish the standards being used, explore whether your conversation partner is morally and intellectually consistent, and discover whether they are a good faith debater. In that pursuit, let’s consider two highly similar scenarios and how they were treated by the media and left-wingers as a whole.
Ashli Babbitt was an unarmed, female, Air Force veteran, who was not physically confronting police. her crime was that she was trespassing on government property – and she was shot dead. Most, myself included, said that Ashli was somewhere she should not have been, doing something she should not have been doing, but she also clearly did not need to be killed. There were no mass riots in her name. She was hardly mentioned at all in the months and years of news cycles and investigations surrounding Jan 6th.
To be clear, Ashli was unarmed; Pretti was illegally armed. Ashli was a small female; Pretti was a fairly large male. Ashli was not making any sort of physical contact with police; Pretti initiated an altercation and resisted restraint. Ashli was a veteran; Pretti was a nurse. Both people made bad choices and paid high consequences – and it is fair to make the argument that neither person needed to be killed. What is not fair, though, is to pretend that Pretti was brutally executed while someone who was factually a much smaller threat than him – Ashli – was killed in a similar fashion and the vast majority of the country remained silent.
Contrary to what the leftist propaganda machine is saying, it is extremely easy to not get killed by ICE. Millions of people – making up over 99.99% of Americans – manage it every day. If you do not want to die in the tragic but preventable manner that Alex Pretti did, don’t start a physical altercation with ICE agents while you are carrying a concealed firearm.
Pretti was the primary and initial actor in causing his own death. ICE also acted imperfectly and that needs to be acknowledged. But more than both of those parties, it is my opinion that the unholy trinity of propagandistic leftist legacy media, leftwing extremist politicians like Tim Walz, and deceptive leftwing social media campaigns have blood on their hands. Their lies, violent rhetoric, and delusions are getting people killed… But that is another topic for another day.
