Look at this scene of total chaos in Minneapolis from a few days ago:
People are even more upset this weekend because Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal agents, just as his parents predicted. What confuses me is why there weren’t daily shootings. Pretti, for example, was armed with a gun and perhaps 51 rounds of ammo (3 magazines times 17 bullets; was he planning to shoot 51 people, to have really bad aim, or to be involved in a multi-hour gun battle?). If people on both sides of this unrest are heavily armed and passionate (the “protesters” say that they’re resisting fascism/Hitler 2.0/Gestapo 2.0) shouldn’t we expect multiple deaths from a scene like the one in the above video (at which nobody was killed, as far as I know).
Separately, here’s my idea for de-escalation: Trump renames ICE to “National Immigration and Customs Enforcement”. They’d be known as “NICE” for short. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) would become “Security & Welcome for Entry, Exit & Trade” or “SWEET”. Media headlines would then read “NICE and SWEET visit Minneapolis”. Who could get angry about that?
Related:
- “The Subway Vigilante Who Never Left Is Back” (New York Times 2026) might explain Mr. Pretti’s epic supply of ammo. The article describes the shooting of four retired investors living on their respective pensions: “The white man who shot four Black teenagers on a downtown subway in December of 1984 … He was convicted of criminal possession of a gun and served eight months in prison … His only regret, he says, was running out of ammunition.” (Compare to NYT January 1985: “Mr. Cabey was arrested in the Bronx on Oct. 13 on charges that he held up three men with a shotgun and stole an undetermined amount of cash and jewelry. … Mr. Canty, 19, of 1372 Washington Avenue, has been arrested four times since he was 16 years old. … Mr. Allen, who is 19 and also lives in a building at 1372 Washington Avenue, is facing a jail sentence for violating probation. … He was first arrested in 1982 at the age of 16 in the Bronx for attempted assault after being accused of shooting another youth in the hand with a BB gun.”)
Tim Walz compares Minnesota to Anne Frank!
https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/2015512343887708359
Lefties love comparing everything to Holocaust and invoke Ann Frank, as long as those who suffer are not actual Jews.
Minnesota represents the opposite of the Anne Frank situation. Native-born Minnesota Democrats could take undocumented migrants into their homes and let them chill out until the next Democrat president is in power. Instead, the migrants are mostly left to their fate while some progressives blow rape whistles.
Of course with SWEET and NICE we would have to change the uniforms: Oxford shirt, rep tie, cardigan sweater, chinos, and canvas sneakers. Replace their weapons with Nerf guns. A commendation would get them a “Warm Fuzzy” award, a reprimand would earn them a “Cold Meanie”. “What do we do, kids, when an officer issues an order? That’s right, we comply. Can you say, ‘Show me your green card?’ I knew you could.”
Phil, I wanted to say thank you so much (again) for highlighting the brave and warm-hearted citizens like Renee Good and Alex Pretti who stood strong with the two upstanding “immigrants” who brutally raped me, strangled me and then drowned me. As a 12-year old, I don’t have the ability to voice this strong feeling I have, so thank you for caring. Renee and Alex are truly the best of what America has to offer!
Phil, I’d of course like to add my own thanks to those of Jocelyn above for your work here highlighting Renee Good and Alex Pretti for their hear-felt support of the “immigrant” who raped me, strangled me and then murdered me. I can’t say enough about these two upstanding Americans! Unlike Jocelyn, I only had the pleasure of being brutally raped once by one of these wonderful “immigrants” before I was strangled to death. Maybe next time I can get the full treatment that Jocelyn enjoyed!
> the two upstanding “immigrants”
AKA their “neighbors”. When the tide turns and the next open borders administration lets them flood back, we’ll have the original problem and all these lives will be lost in vain again. If the left wants to remove ICE, maybe they should concede to closing the borders. They wouldn’t have ICE so damn far inside the country if the immigration was controlled at the border. Is compromise a completely forgotten concept?
Make it 52 rounds, probably one was chambered. In general, there is nothing wrong with having three magazines while carrying, unless trying to pull it on (federal) police which is performing its duties. You may read on advice of handgun experts, such as Massad Ayoob. If you prefer you can refer to Cherev Gidon training. RIP Mr Pretti. Do not want to discuss deceased, but I doubt the article’s classification him as “caring”. Maybe adventurous? 37 – year old without a family and little ones to care for does not strike like caring. I am not trying to judge but male nurses that I know are political conservatives and have families to care for.
Carrying a firearm is not a substitute for situational awareness, operational readiness and civilized behavior. Even if he did not try to pull the gun, which looks like he tried, actively getting into a tussle while carrying is a dangerous behavior.
perplexed: I still can’t figure out what the extra magazines were for in the unfortunate Mr. Pretti’s case. The gun jams and he has time to swap magazines before the 20+ ICE/CBP agents fire on him? I asked ChatGPT and it said “Preparedness for an extended encounter or multiple attackers”. It’s careful to remind us that Mr. Pretti was entirely peaceful and had no plans to use his gun against law enforcement.
Grok says “Some documented cases have involved 6–12+ rounds fired by civilians.” when asked the question in general. When asked about Mr. Pretti specifically, Grok also reminds us that he was 100% peaceful and never had any intent to shoot 1 ICE agent, much less shoot 51. “His ~50+ rounds (standard 9mm setup: 17+1 in the gun + two 17-round spares) were likely just everyday carry for self-defense in a tense urban environment, not premeditated for offense.”
Philip, AI, at its basis, is normalization over available data sets, randomization + computing power. If random variable distribution fits flat version of Gaussian, it produces better results. But in survival situation you really interested in right tail of the distribution , so listen to experts. For example, Massad Ayoob, starting min 7 sec 25 or so https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vib793gTG8s
I have 2 hypothesizes: that he either carried for self-defense or, if he had it to assault ICE agents, he was totally incompetent and did not know what he was getting into. In the last case the only success against agent with body armor could be an ambush and large volume of ammunition made sense, since body armor requires large volume of fire for accidental bullet pass through compromised parts of it. But he was not ambushing. Maybe he was waiting for the picture opportunity to act as a savior – this is insane, he had a second to live after he brandished.
In first case, carrying for self defense, as 9 mm goes, in my personal opinion, someone needs to go with doubletaps to stop the threat from keep attacking. So 17 cartridges become equivalent of 8 threats neutralized. Add to it that during adrenaline rash in thick of the fight an experienced shooter misses 50% of the targets then for moderately trained hand gunner need one magazine to neutralize 2 – 3 threats.
Also, photos had it a custom SIG (over $2000 gun, usually they are very precise in calm target shooting) with one mag in and another magazine, 2, not 3 magazines. Maybe he was going on a multi-day hike afterwards, not sure whether MN has brown bears, he would need all 9 mm ammo he could carry to stop those. Why would anyone trying second guess why he was carrying an ammo? Maybe he had ammo fetish. Or maybe he was afterwards visiting his biker boyfriend, then he was under-gunned to deal with his rivals. 2nd Amendment and Constitutional premise of seeking happiness protects individual from micromanagement by others. The issue is that he was interfering with and about to assault lawmen who were enforcing US law, not much different what they were doing under previous Obama and Biden administrations, not the amount of ammo he was carrying. I wonder when Trump will invoke the insurrection clause and Bondy will go after politicians inciting riots while hiding behind fences and armed security.
In both cases, multiple things had to go wrong for the killing to happen.
It’s not enough for the ICE person to be poorly trained. It’s not enough for them to be thugs with little concern for life. There was something else:
In the Renee Good case:
– The ICE guy was recently hit by another car, so had some mental hang-ups over that
– He rushed to confront her by stepping in front of her car after she had been told to drive away. That goes against training.
– After turning the wheel all the way to the right, she still clipped him with her car.
– So the officer fired into the side of a car of a fleeing suspect (also against training), killing her.
It seems very plausible that removing just one of those things would have preventing the killing.
He could have been better trained. He could have known not to step in front of a car. He could have know not to shoot at fleeing suspects. He could have not had PTSD. He could have just not been an asshole who seemed totally unconcerned with shooting her.
In the Alex Pretti case, one ICE guy disarmed him, but it looks like another guy freaked out over the existence of the gun and shot Pretti.
That seems crazy, but a few people think there was an accidental discharge of that gun:
https://www.reddit.com/r/antitrump/comments/1qme7zr/former_sniper_figures_out_the_weapon_was/
(even his shirt says ‘sniper’)
So: ICE guy grabs Pretti’s gun from Pretti’s holster (which was never drawn before), then the ICE guy fires it into the ground, then other ICE guys think they’re being shot at and start opening fired themselves.
Not sure if this is true, but it would explain why the ICE guy shot Pretti.
And if it’s true, how often does this happen? How often does an officer disarm someone, then accidentally fire the gun, causing everyone else to think they’re in a firefight?
So these are two events rare events. Unfortunately, with so many reckless untrained ICE thugs running around, rare events have the ability to happen every week. ICE will continue beclowning themselves.
Thanks, David. It sounds like a scene from The Naked Gun or The Other Guys. But certainly it ties into my question of why these gun battles from misunderstandings don’t arise every day when you have armed anti-fascists bravely confronting fascists in confined urban situations.
David, thank you so much for your insightful commentary in support of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two of the Greatest American heroes I am able to remember. And also your rightful reprimand of the law enforcement Gestapo/Nazi “Thugs.” Laken sends her regards as well.
The only people beclowning themselves are the ones who keep going around muttering “Anne Frank” and “wrong side of history” like they’re magic spells that will make them win an insurrection. Or by feigning disingenuous concerns when what you actually want is for the insurgents to win. Nobody falls for any of this anymore.
@David,
However, the question that isn’t being answered is this: Why do we have people like Good and Pretti getting in the way of ICE? In Good’s case, she was intentionally provoking ICE. In Pretti’s case, he was on site confronting ICE — and had done so a week earlier as well — while carrying a loaded gun. I get it, some folks disagree with ICE and Trump, but the fact remains: if you try to play the hero, whether you are armed or not, there is a good chance you could die in situations like this.
David, thank you so much for your insightful commentary in support of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two of the Greatest American heroes I am able to remember. And also your rightful reprimand of the law enforcement Gestapo/Nazi “Thugs.” Laken sends her regards as well.
Off topic, but this would be a good time to remind folks it is going to be 85 degrees in Palm Beach tomorrow!
George,
Re: “provoking” and “confronting”. This seems very much in the range of normal protest.
In this video before things happen, he’s shouting and filming, but letting himself be pushed back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa3XUH1F20g
When the cop goes overboard and pushes that lady into the snow, Pretti steps in front to stop the cop from advancing, but doesn’t attack the cop:
https://youtu.be/j4nJVPF3tK8?si=Y_QQnTD-i8JLqVmh&t=449
He raises his hand in an obvious way, as if to say “I’m not touching you.” Seems like he realized the danger as soon as he did it.
Do we judge Pretti for reflexively stepping in front of a women being shoved?
He’s very quickly on the ground, being grabbed from all sides, likely blind. He’s resisting, but is there any sign of him trying to do harm to the police?
Then things really go sideways.
– One guy disarmed him, then accidentally fires that gun into the ground
– One of the officers is scared by the shot, and without knowing where the shot came from, decides to shoot the guy on the ground in the back.
– A second officer, seeing the first one shooting, decided to join in.
The defense seems to be “If you’re around these officers, anything can happen.”
This is how you talk about being around a wild animal, like a bear that wonders into your back yard, and not how you talk about people trained to protect and to serve.
If you watched this video without knowing the context, it looks more like a roving criminal gang, and not a police force action in a respectable nation.
> The defense seems to be “If you’re around these officers, anything can happen.”
To a certain point, yes.
> This is how you talk about being around a wild animal, like a bear that wonders into your back yard, and not how you talk about people trained to protect and to serve.
True, but given how the media has portrayed ICE as a kind of wild animal, I would avoid them at all costs unless my loved ones were in immediate danger. Would you put your own life at risk and charge at a bear just because you saw a stranger provoking it?
I want to be very clear that I am not approving of how ICE responded to Good and Pretti. However, no one is acknowledging that the protesters are intentionally provoking ICE (the bear) and putting their own lives at risk for a cause that is hardly worth that level of risk.
I wish we didn’t have such a militarized police in the U.S. at all levels (local, state, federal). But it is obvious that they are militarized and on a hair trigger so it is basic survival instinct to refrain from provoking. (My dream of less militarized police might not be realistic given that the U.S. has lost its social cohesion due to asylum-based immigration (assembling humans with nothing in common).)
David, I really appreciate your continuing kind words in support of the heroes Renee Good and Alex Pretti (and so many others!) who have shown such bravery in defending those who have raped, killed and assaulted people like me. Your words are truly heartwarming! The “thugs” in law enforcement that you describe are one and the same with the scum law enforcement officers who responded when I was brutally raped (twice), strangled and drowned by two upstanding “immigrants.” Where would defenseless 12-year-olds like me be without brave folks like you? Laken Riley would like to also reiterate my words here in support of you. You are so inspiring….please keep it up!
What happened to David, our loquacious defender of the heroes Renee Good and Alex Pretti and his gaslighting sermons?