Big C said:
Zippergate, what exactly is your point?
We can all acknowledge that Alex Pretti wouldn't have gotten shot had he a) not been carrying a firearm... and/or... b) not put himself between the "officers" and another protester.
But are you validating his killing because of that?
Not validating it, calling it what it is: a regrettable incident that never would have happened if Pretti hadn't intentionally put himself in such a dangerous situation. Want to be a woke warrior and resist arrest? Fine, just be prepared to do the time and most importantly, don't put law enforcement officers, yourself, and others in danger by carrying your weapon. Isn't this pure common sense? I mean, it's so obvious that one has to wonder what Pretti's intent was given his state of mind. Personally, I think he intended to be a martyr because he knew how the Left and the MSM would treat his death.
Do I think the ICE agent should have fired? I don't know, probably not, but who am I to judge these things? Every law organization has procedures for handling these kinds of incidents. And we have courts. If the ICE agent acted unlawfully, he will be tried in court as is right and just. How soon we forget Saint Floyd. His killer, Chauvin, was tried, convicted and sentenced to a long prison term, much longer than a typical criminal serves for even worse crimes and was allowed to be mercilessly beaten in prison. (and I should add that Chauvin may not have even acted unlawfully but merely followed his training which would make him and his fellow officers not guilty.) This is our justice system. It's not perfect, but it's how we settle these kinds of things.
So what am I against here? I'm against the weaponization of this incident. I'm against calling the ICE agent a murderer. The guy is a human being who is doing a job and trying to get home to his family every night. Put yourself in his shoes for just a moment and ask yourself how you would react having to wrestle a deranged man with a gun on his body. But Pretti didn't use the gun, you say? Doesn't matter. Think about it. Another officer, following procedure, shouts, "Gun!", what's your first instinct? For most people, it is self-preservation. He has a right to defend himself. It's the law and rightfully so. And in the fog of war, unexpected things happen. Whether he and his fellow agents acted appropriately in this particular situation is for the judicial process to decide, but IT AIN'T MURDER. Do words have meaning anymore? Anyone calling this murder is fanning the flames of hate and encouraging more violence. Everything is being reduced to an ends-justify-the-means calculus. Is this really what we have become?
Anything to stop Hitler?
I'm afraid that the radical Left looks at cases like Laken Riley and says, "See, the Right weaponizes tragedy so it's okay if we do the same." To that I say, good grief, think deeply about the details of these two cases. They are not the same. If you are outraged by what happened to Pretti and not by what happened to Riley (including all the conditions that were allowed to happen leading up to it), I don't know what to say; it shocks me that an intelligent, decent person could come to that conclusion.
