[WhiskeyOutpost]

From my experience as a former LEO, this looks like a bad shoot.

The Renee Good shoot can be easily justified, but this one... not so much. The fact that this guy had a gun "on" him matters little to none. If he did not take his weapon out, with his own hands, it's a bad shoot. Possessing the weapon, on his person is a non-point and does not justify lethal force. If he took it out, which he apparently did not do, then things would be different. He may have been disarmed by an officer immediately before he was shot, which makes this look even worse.

The guy having a current concealed carry permit also means nothing in the context of this shooting. Absolutely nothing.

Yes, ICE has to deal with a bunch of idiots and this guy shouldn't have been there in the first place. But unfortunately one officer made a hasty decision that turned out to be the wrong one. Regardless of the legal outcome, a guy is dead, and this officer's life, as he knows it, is over.

[rhinobullet003]

Originally Posted by Vedderman ↗

So? Did he fucking draw on them? No. He didn't. He was a US citizen with a legal carry permit.

You're such a cucked bootlicking cunt that you don't believe in the Second Amendment either?

I mean, you already cheered when they wiped their ass with the 4th, the 5th, and the 14th...I guess 2A is free game for you bootlicking cucks now too?

It's clear you hate America and love the Illegal immigrants. And you're an admin???? Wow

[WonderMomma]

^
Jesus H. Christ.

[WonderMomma]

Originally Posted by Rugboot88 ↗

I almost never post here. I have been on this site for about fifteen years and I have treated it like a zoo. Observe the exhibits often. Interact with the animals rarely.

I am speaking now because what I am seeing in these videos and in this discussion crosses a line that has nothing to do with left versus right.

I am retired military. I fought in Afghanistan. I fought in Iraq. I later worked as a civilian law enforcement officer. I support police. I believe in borders and legal immigration. Yes, I voted for the orange man. None of that obligates me to abandon constitutional principles or suspend basic logic.

I want to say this plainly. I did not vote for state-sanctioned murder. No one voted for this. It is entirely reasonable to say that whatever people expected from federal enforcement, no one reasonably anticipated masked agents killing a restrained citizen in the street.

Before anyone misreads me, let me be clear about something else. I do not support rioting, looting, destroying your own city, or obnoxiously interfering with lawful law enforcement operations. I do support constitutionally protected activity. Those are not the same thing, and pretending they are is intellectually dishonest.

What happened to Alex Pretti was not a clean use of force. It was not a split-second decision by a lone officer facing an imminent threat. Based on the publicly available videos, it appears to be unorganized chaos. Multiple federal agents engaging one man. He is taken to the ground. Physical control is established. One agent physically removes Pretti’s firearm. Then someone yells “gun” and lethal force follows.

Here is the legally relevant point people keep missing. Use of force is judged on objective reasonableness at the moment force is applied. Not before. Not after. At that moment, deadly force is justified only if there is an articulable, imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm that cannot be otherwise stopped.

Yelling a word does not reset the use-of-force continuum. It never has. A shouted warning is a data point, not a legal trigger switch. If officers could lawfully escalate to lethal force simply because someone yelled “gun,” regardless of control or context, then any arrest could end in a shooting. That is not the law and it is not how policing works.

Some people argue that other officers are justified because they trusted a fellow officer who yelled “gun.” That argument fails once the known firearm has been physically removed and multiple agents have hands-on control. At that point, the threat analysis changes. Capability is reduced. Opportunity is constrained. Deadly force then requires extraordinary justification. Speculation about what someone “could have had” does not meet that standard. Possibility is not imminence.

If this exact scenario occurred in a local department, with a restrained and disarmed subject and multiple officers on top of him, it would be treated as a criminal investigation without debate. Federal uniforms do not change that standard.

Now to the gun argument itself.

“He brought a gun to a protest.”

That is legally irrelevant. Pretti had a valid carry permit. The Second Amendment does not evaporate because someone dislikes the setting. A legally carried firearm is not intent, not aggression, and not justification for lethal force. Rights do not become suspicious simply because they are exercised in public.

What matters is behavior. The videos do not show Pretti threatening anyone with a gun. They show him holding a phone and attempting to help another protester who had just been pepper sprayed. That context matters because force analysis is driven by conduct, not by post hoc narratives.

People are also labeling Pretti an agitator who interfered with law enforcement. The videos do not support that claim. Recording officers in public is a constitutionally protected activity. It is not obstruction. What is visible is a medical professional attempting to assist a person in medical distress after chemical spray was deployed. That conduct is lawful and consistent with his training as a nurse.

People also keep using the word “resisting” as if it is a legal cheat code.

Any reasonable human being who is suddenly mobbed by multiple partially identified agents, pepper sprayed or bear maced, tackled, and pinned is going to move. That is not criminal intent. That is physiology. Anyone who has ever been sprayed knows your body reacts before your brain does.

Resistance alone does not justify deadly force. It never has. If it did, half the arrests in this country would end in funerals. The law requires proportionality and necessity, especially once control is established.

This is also where I think people should be more cautious about state crafted narratives. I am not saying everything is a lie. I am saying power has incentives, and early official accounts deserve scrutiny when video and witness evidence are publicly available. History shows that the real danger is not citizens asking questions, but citizens being discouraged from comparing claims to observable reality. Repetition should never replace inquiry.

This is why demonizing Pretti matters. It is not analysis. It is rationalization. It is an attempt to make state violence feel acceptable by rewriting the victim.

Also, I don't know this dude from a can of paint, but feel it is worth mentioning that I have watched Vedderman argue here for years, i dont agree with everything he says. However, He is not left or right. He is not biased in the way people keep claiming. He is reminding people that rights only exist if you are willing to defend them when the person losing them is not someone you like.

For what it is worth, I am not claiming to be an expert. I am just some guy on the internet with lived experience who is applying the same legal and moral standards I was trained to uphold.

The most dangerous precedent is not one bad shooting. It is how quickly people excuse state violence when it aligns with a preferred policy outcome. History shows that once violence is normalized against the “right” people, the definition of “right” keeps expanding.

I love this country. That is why this disgusts me. You can support law enforcement, support legal immigration, and still say this crossed a line. In fact, if you believe in constitutional government, you are obligated to.

Alright. I’ve said my piece. I’ll crawl back into my hole for another fifteen years now.

That was one of the clearest and most grounded posts I have seen here in a long time. You cut through the usual left versus right noise and focused on the actual constitutional and legal issues without turning it into a partisan sermon. I also appreciated that you acknowledged Vedderman’s consistency even while disagreeing with some of his opinions.

Your perspective carries weight because you have spent real years serving both your country and your community, and it shows in how you approached this. Absolutely fucking refreshing. I can only hit the thank you button once but I'm smashing the hell out of it. THANK YOU.

[foxfantastic]

Originally Posted by rhinobullet003 ↗

It's clear you hate America and love the Illegal immigrants. And you're an admin???? Wow

But this thread has nothing to do with "illegal immigration". It has everything to do with the government implementing summary execution.

And him being an admin has nothing to do with anything. This website isn't sponsored by the US government. As a matter of fact, I think they've tried to shut it down a couple times.

[Mr.NoCredit]

Originally Posted by Meridian ↗

The 2nd amendment is there to allow people to defend themselves against a tyrannical government that turns against its own citizens.

And look what it got him too.

[DrKGSmiff]

Originally Posted by WhiskeyOutpost ↗

From my experience as a former LEO, this looks like a bad shoot.

The Renee Good shoot can be easily justified, but this one... not so much. The fact that this guy had a gun "on" him matters little to none. If he did not take his weapon out, with his own hands, it's a bad shoot. Possessing the weapon, on his person is a non-point and does not justify lethal force. If he took it out, which he apparently did not do, then things would be different. He may have been disarmed by an officer immediately before he was shot, which makes this look even worse.

The guy having a current concealed carry permit also means nothing in the context of this shooting. Absolutely nothing.

Yes, ICE has to deal with a bunch of idiots and this guy shouldn't have been there in the first place. But unfortunately one officer made a hasty decision that turned out to be the wrong one. Regardless of the legal outcome, a guy is dead, and this officer's life, as he knows it, is over.

I’m not ready to call good/bad shoot, and I’m beginning to think that we’ll never get the camera footage that tells us definitively, unless one or more of the agents were wearing a body cam.

Pretti having had the gun on him at the beginning of the fight isn’t really relevant, nor is that gun having been removed before he was shot.

It doesn’t appear that it was ever drawn, and it appears that it was removed from him before the shooting, so the only relevance the gun really has is that it tells the agents that he had come armed. To your point, though, that, alone doesn’t change a bad shoot into a good shoot.

In my view, the only way we can ever know it was a good shoot is if we see what Pretti was doing at the moment of the first shot.

Just because a weapon was removed from him, doesn’t mean he was unarmed. A suspect that hasn’t been searched isn’t considered “unarmed” any more than a gun is considered unloaded until you check it.

The fight was ongoing, and if Pretti’s hands were visible, then it was a bad shoot. If he was reaching into his clothing, then it was a good shoot. Unfortunately the video we have doesn’t show us that- and likely won’t unless there was body cam that hasn’t been released yet.

[StrategicNuclearMoose]

Dark times in America

[tyroneslothrop]

Originally Posted by DrKGSmiff ↗

I’m beginning to think that we’ll never get the camera footage that tells us definitively, unless one or more of the agents were wearing a body cam.

Alex Pretti's killing was recorded on body-camera videos, DHS says.

Alex Pretti's killing was recorded on body-camera videos, DHS says
Julia Ainsley
Mon, January 26, 2026 at 12:45 PM EST

Investigators are reviewing body-camera videos from immigration agents in the fatal shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed to NBC News.

Homeland Security investigators have videos recorded by cameras worn by multiple agents, department spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said.

The agents involved in the Pretti shooting were part of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, a specialized force, McLaughlin said. Two law enforcement officials told NBC News that unit has more body-worn cameras.

Pretti was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis on Saturday, the city's second fatal shooting by a federal officer this month amid the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration in Minnesota.

The encounter was recorded by eyewitnesses, and videos circulated widely on social media throughout the weekend. DHS has said an agent shot Pretti in self-defense after he violently resisted attempts to disarm him. But eyewitness videos taken from various angles appear to contradict elements of the department's account of events.

The existence of body-camera video could help clarify some of the basic facts of the shooting and potentially serve as evidence in legal proceedings related to the weekend violence.

Pretti's killing intensified debate over the federal government's aggressive tactics and led to sharply contrasting accounts of what led up to it. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz blamed "untrained" federal agents, while Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino faulted local protesters and officials for "vilifying" agents and causing a "preventable tragedy."

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said "every video will be analyzed, everything will be looked at" as part of the investigation into Pretti's death. President Donald Trump said his administration is "reviewing everything" about the shooting. Trump announced Monday morning he is sending border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota, where he will manage ICE operations on the ground.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat and a fierce critic of the Trump administration, said in a statement: "If Tom Homan is here to engage constructively with local leaders and find common ground, I welcome that conversation. My door is open."

"If his visit is instead focused on escalating tensions or spreading misinformation," Frey added, "Minneapolis doesn’t need that here."

Walz and Frey are two of the Democratic officials under federal investigation over their public comments around immigration enforcement, NBC News has reported. The elected officials have said the administration's probe is purely political.

The fatal shooting of Pretti came 17 days after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot Renée Nicole Good. Trump claimed Good "viciously ran over" ICE officer Jonathan Ross with her car, but videos recorded at the scene contradicted that assertion. Good's death sparked anti-ICE demonstrations in Minneapolis and other major U.S. cities.

Pretti and Good were both 37-year-old U.S. citizens. The Border Patrol agent who shot and killed Pretti has not been publicly identified.

DHS' immigration officers have shot 12 people since September as the federal agency has dramatically increased deportation operations nationwide, NBC News has previously reported.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

[Tony76]

ICE agent shoots him in the back first with no justification.
Disarmed him, then shot him in the back and executed him.
Look at this video to see the slide moving back and ejected casing.