Decades ago I spent some time in LA and at one point got a traffic ticket for failing to yield to a jaywalker. One I could not see because he was in some other part of the crossing, hidden behind a stopped car. I was told I should have known there was a jaywalker I had to yield to because the other cars weren't moving when the light turned green. :-(
One of the locals explained it to me: In CA, jaywalkers have the right of way -- even dead ones.
Similarly, in the Navy we had the COLREGS to regulate traffic flow on the high seas. But no matter what the regulations said, there was always the unwritten Law of Gross Tonnage in the back of your mind...you never wanted to contest the right of way to a watery grave with a much larger ship.
True but not when a larger motor vessel is constrained by draft in a channel where it cannot safely maneuver. Anyway, Inland Waterway Rules and at-sea COLREGS rules do differ. And as I understand it that when you are "in extremis" and fail to take common sense steps to avoid collision or kind or stand your ground and follow the rules and collide anyway, you are going to be found at fault. It is very rare, that after a collision, that both parties are not both found to be at fault, one hugely so and the other only a small amount. I think it is a truism that most at-sea collisions are (were) avoidable.
Pretti had the right to be there, to carry, to protest (peacefully). He'd still be live if he'd not struggled while being apprehended. Good shooting? Bad shooting? I don't know yet. Was it a "bad"death? It sure was, and it seems it was a consequence of what was doing that day. IMO, he was doing stuff that seems to qualify as stupid.
I can respect that people are willing to stand into danger for what is in their mind a just cause, like going to war, to protest a war, abortion, an iffy election or a new tea tax. It's a choice, might be fraught with risk. You make your bed, you sleep in it...and maybe never wake up. It's a choice. I never knew you, Mr. Pretti, but R.I.P., I guess.
I get this argument almost every time I cover some homeowner going outside to "interrupt" someone breaking into a vehicle. So much so, that I now usually include the argument as the last paragraph to the post.
You have the right to confront someone on your own property, especially if that person is doing something like breaking into your car. It isn't the smartest choice. But then common sense seems to have taken a vacation in America.
A lot will also depend on where you live, what laws they have and how woke the district attorney is. And how big of a street crowd they can gin up to for you getting slamdunked for terrorizing or shooting someone who weren't doin' nothin'. I think you nailed it, Zendo, by suggesting making smart choices. "Smart" being sort of the opposite of "stupid".
When I began carrying I was advised to be more thoughtful and circumspect with where I went and how I acted. I found that to be good advice.
It seems some others flip to the other side and allow their carry to embolden them as though a carried weapon encourages them to be less thoughtful and take more risks. Not wise, in my opinion.
Yeah. Right of way is what the court/jury decides when you sue the driver for running you down in a crosswalk. That is, if you survive the impact.
.
Seriously, I look both ways before crossing a one-way street. I do not care who is in the right. I am too old to spend months recovering. That is if I survive the impact.
Next of kin" Well, yeah, his death left us emotionally destroyed and financially impoverished. We likely will never recover, emotionally or financially, from his death. BUT! At least he (was right)(had the right of way)!"
Alex was part of the group protesting, blowing whistles, etc. All legal. One group member attempted to impede an officer and was shoved. Alex attempted to assist the protester shoved by ICE. Wrong move - at that point he ceased being a protester and became a perpetrator (aiding and abetting at a minimum) while armed. Not a whole lot of situational awareness on his part. FAFO one more time. Have these leftys never lived in the real world? Assault while armed is a crime, and the LEO response is not very often gentle.
The LEOs/FLEAs in this case are also perceived to be an hostile occupying (and illegal) armed force, and the local political class is not helping that perception -- in fact, they're making it worse.
So when an "incident" happens, amidst a large crowd of HIGHLY-agitated "protesters", the FLEAs' perfectly-reasonable response is to end it as quickly as possible. That does NOT mean using *lethal* force, but it does mean using *overwhelming* force to subdue and remove individuals from the scene.
(Which is why seven agents confronted a single protester who shoved [read: assaulted] an agent; to get them detained and safely off-the-scene quickly so the agents could get back to their job.)
But you take that environment and throw a non-FLEA firearm into the mix? Like the training says: in that scuffle, there's no "legal gun" or "illegal gun", nor is there "your gun" or "my gun"; it's just THE GUN. Nobody has time to hit "Pause" to check the particulars, and anyone who is focusing on that right now, is Monday-morning-armchair-quarterbacking.
(Which is not necessarily to justify *or* condemn the ICE agents' actions. Until the investigation is done, we won't know if they were justified, and we won't know that they weren't. Someone needs to remind Donald Trump, Tim Walz, and Jacob Frey: WE DON'T YET KNOW!)
Again, not to debate the LEGALITY of carrying during a volatile protest; it absolutely is LEGAL. What we question is whether it's WISE.
it’s another example of how dumb people have become. They have the RIGHT so they don’t have to look….
I used to love driving, the last few years have diminished that love a bunch.
here you are supposed to walk/run FACING traffic on roads with no sidewalks. my calculator doesn’t have enough space to count the morons walking with traffic coming up behind them. and don’t get me started on bicycle riders!
nothing makes me laugh more than fitness nuts running and biking on the roads breathing car exhaust..
The Director of the FBI says you have to sacrifice your 2A rights to exercise your 1A rights.
I'm not saying that carrying into a ... "dynamic" situation -- or a situation you know or suspect might become "dynamic" -- is a good idea, but to say it's ILLEGAL?
This whole situation is a clusterf*ck of epic proportions, with both sides blaming the other, when the reality is there's enough blame to cover everyone:
- ICE has a mission mandated by federal law, but there's a lot of instances in which they're going overboard. The optics are bad, to say the least, but that does NOT mean their mission should be scrapped.
- Meanwhile, Minnesota is a "Sanctuary State" so their state and local LEOs are barred from assisting ICE and CBP, including with crowd/riot control. Thus, ICE has to handle crowd control WHILE engaging in warrant arrests, and so they naturally bring many more agents than would be necessary if locals handled the crowds and ICE could do their thing.
- Relatedly, if the locals handled crowds and ICE could focus on their mission, with the manpower they have on the ground, it could all have been over and done in a week with ZERO bystander incidents. Instead, we're approaching the FOURTH week of operations and increasingly volatile "protests".
- ALL public officials are violating the "72 Hour Rule" and speaking out before any investigation is done.
- Trump is calling Pretti (and Renee Good) a domestic terrorist who was out to kill law enforcement before any investigation is done. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey are (justifiably) calling him out for speaking without knowing what actually happened ... but also are labeling EVERY ICE action as illegal, unwarranted, kidnapping, etc., and every ICE-involved death as "murder" or "public execution" ... and doing so without knowing any more than Trump knows, effectively doing the exact same thing Trump is doing. (But it's okay when they do it.)
And then Kristi Noem comes out saying that "real protesters" don't bring guns instead of signs, and Kash Patel says carrying while protesting is breaking the law?
If I were reading this in a near-future dystopian novel, I'd have to put it down and walk away; it's too over-the-top to make for engaging fiction. But it's not fiction.
TN's pedestrian/crosswalk law is much more reasonable than Oregon's. In OR, a driver is required to wait until the pedestrian has crossed and is safely on the side or otherwise out of the crosswalk. Doesn't matter if it's an eight-lane thoroughfare (three travel lanes each way, plus a center/left-turn lane and a dedicated right-turn-only lane) and they started from your corner, you're supposed to wait until they're on the opposite sidewalk. And the jury's out if the pedestrian is crossing both ways and goes from one crosswalk to the other without ever stepping onto the curb; the way the law is written, you might have to wait for that, too.
In practice, "one full lane over" is usually good enough, but if you have a traffic cop with a stick up his @$$ -- or a monthly ticket/fine quota to meet -- they'll pull you over in a heartbeat.
All of your comments about Alex's rights are dead on. Pun intended.
Bullseye!
Decades ago I spent some time in LA and at one point got a traffic ticket for failing to yield to a jaywalker. One I could not see because he was in some other part of the crossing, hidden behind a stopped car. I was told I should have known there was a jaywalker I had to yield to because the other cars weren't moving when the light turned green. :-(
One of the locals explained it to me: In CA, jaywalkers have the right of way -- even dead ones.
Similarly, in the Navy we had the COLREGS to regulate traffic flow on the high seas. But no matter what the regulations said, there was always the unwritten Law of Gross Tonnage in the back of your mind...you never wanted to contest the right of way to a watery grave with a much larger ship.
I learned in sailing school that sailboats have the right of way over motorboats -- but you don't try to apply that rule when dealing with a ship.
True but not when a larger motor vessel is constrained by draft in a channel where it cannot safely maneuver. Anyway, Inland Waterway Rules and at-sea COLREGS rules do differ. And as I understand it that when you are "in extremis" and fail to take common sense steps to avoid collision or kind or stand your ground and follow the rules and collide anyway, you are going to be found at fault. It is very rare, that after a collision, that both parties are not both found to be at fault, one hugely so and the other only a small amount. I think it is a truism that most at-sea collisions are (were) avoidable.
This was in Holland, inland rules, so there are probably some differences in the details.
The basic "don't be stupid" rule applies everywhere, though.
And the sad part is that a person doesn't have to be overly smart to not do stupid things.
Pretti had the right to be there, to carry, to protest (peacefully). He'd still be live if he'd not struggled while being apprehended. Good shooting? Bad shooting? I don't know yet. Was it a "bad"death? It sure was, and it seems it was a consequence of what was doing that day. IMO, he was doing stuff that seems to qualify as stupid.
I can respect that people are willing to stand into danger for what is in their mind a just cause, like going to war, to protest a war, abortion, an iffy election or a new tea tax. It's a choice, might be fraught with risk. You make your bed, you sleep in it...and maybe never wake up. It's a choice. I never knew you, Mr. Pretti, but R.I.P., I guess.
I get this argument almost every time I cover some homeowner going outside to "interrupt" someone breaking into a vehicle. So much so, that I now usually include the argument as the last paragraph to the post.
You have the right to confront someone on your own property, especially if that person is doing something like breaking into your car. It isn't the smartest choice. But then common sense seems to have taken a vacation in America.
A lot will also depend on where you live, what laws they have and how woke the district attorney is. And how big of a street crowd they can gin up to for you getting slamdunked for terrorizing or shooting someone who weren't doin' nothin'. I think you nailed it, Zendo, by suggesting making smart choices. "Smart" being sort of the opposite of "stupid".
When I began carrying I was advised to be more thoughtful and circumspect with where I went and how I acted. I found that to be good advice.
It seems some others flip to the other side and allow their carry to embolden them as though a carried weapon encourages them to be less thoughtful and take more risks. Not wise, in my opinion.
"more...cirumspect". Yes. I find that I shop at Walmart far less since getting my concealed carry permit.
Yeah. Right of way is what the court/jury decides when you sue the driver for running you down in a crosswalk. That is, if you survive the impact.
.
Seriously, I look both ways before crossing a one-way street. I do not care who is in the right. I am too old to spend months recovering. That is if I survive the impact.
.
Old adage:
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
Next of kin" Well, yeah, his death left us emotionally destroyed and financially impoverished. We likely will never recover, emotionally or financially, from his death. BUT! At least he (was right)(had the right of way)!"
Alex was part of the group protesting, blowing whistles, etc. All legal. One group member attempted to impede an officer and was shoved. Alex attempted to assist the protester shoved by ICE. Wrong move - at that point he ceased being a protester and became a perpetrator (aiding and abetting at a minimum) while armed. Not a whole lot of situational awareness on his part. FAFO one more time. Have these leftys never lived in the real world? Assault while armed is a crime, and the LEO response is not very often gentle.
The LEOs/FLEAs in this case are also perceived to be an hostile occupying (and illegal) armed force, and the local political class is not helping that perception -- in fact, they're making it worse.
So when an "incident" happens, amidst a large crowd of HIGHLY-agitated "protesters", the FLEAs' perfectly-reasonable response is to end it as quickly as possible. That does NOT mean using *lethal* force, but it does mean using *overwhelming* force to subdue and remove individuals from the scene.
(Which is why seven agents confronted a single protester who shoved [read: assaulted] an agent; to get them detained and safely off-the-scene quickly so the agents could get back to their job.)
But you take that environment and throw a non-FLEA firearm into the mix? Like the training says: in that scuffle, there's no "legal gun" or "illegal gun", nor is there "your gun" or "my gun"; it's just THE GUN. Nobody has time to hit "Pause" to check the particulars, and anyone who is focusing on that right now, is Monday-morning-armchair-quarterbacking.
(Which is not necessarily to justify *or* condemn the ICE agents' actions. Until the investigation is done, we won't know if they were justified, and we won't know that they weren't. Someone needs to remind Donald Trump, Tim Walz, and Jacob Frey: WE DON'T YET KNOW!)
Again, not to debate the LEGALITY of carrying during a volatile protest; it absolutely is LEGAL. What we question is whether it's WISE.
it’s another example of how dumb people have become. They have the RIGHT so they don’t have to look….
I used to love driving, the last few years have diminished that love a bunch.
here you are supposed to walk/run FACING traffic on roads with no sidewalks. my calculator doesn’t have enough space to count the morons walking with traffic coming up behind them. and don’t get me started on bicycle riders!
nothing makes me laugh more than fitness nuts running and biking on the roads breathing car exhaust..
I see DUMB people..
And then Kash Patel -- who 100% should know better -- comes on and says that no, it is ILLEGAL to carry at a protest. (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/01/25/alex-pretti-minneapolis-shooting-gun-rights-border-patrol-ice/88348880007/)
The Director of the FBI says you have to sacrifice your 2A rights to exercise your 1A rights.
I'm not saying that carrying into a ... "dynamic" situation -- or a situation you know or suspect might become "dynamic" -- is a good idea, but to say it's ILLEGAL?
This whole situation is a clusterf*ck of epic proportions, with both sides blaming the other, when the reality is there's enough blame to cover everyone:
- ICE has a mission mandated by federal law, but there's a lot of instances in which they're going overboard. The optics are bad, to say the least, but that does NOT mean their mission should be scrapped.
- Meanwhile, Minnesota is a "Sanctuary State" so their state and local LEOs are barred from assisting ICE and CBP, including with crowd/riot control. Thus, ICE has to handle crowd control WHILE engaging in warrant arrests, and so they naturally bring many more agents than would be necessary if locals handled the crowds and ICE could do their thing.
- Relatedly, if the locals handled crowds and ICE could focus on their mission, with the manpower they have on the ground, it could all have been over and done in a week with ZERO bystander incidents. Instead, we're approaching the FOURTH week of operations and increasingly volatile "protests".
- ALL public officials are violating the "72 Hour Rule" and speaking out before any investigation is done.
- Trump is calling Pretti (and Renee Good) a domestic terrorist who was out to kill law enforcement before any investigation is done. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey are (justifiably) calling him out for speaking without knowing what actually happened ... but also are labeling EVERY ICE action as illegal, unwarranted, kidnapping, etc., and every ICE-involved death as "murder" or "public execution" ... and doing so without knowing any more than Trump knows, effectively doing the exact same thing Trump is doing. (But it's okay when they do it.)
And then Kristi Noem comes out saying that "real protesters" don't bring guns instead of signs, and Kash Patel says carrying while protesting is breaking the law?
If I were reading this in a near-future dystopian novel, I'd have to put it down and walk away; it's too over-the-top to make for engaging fiction. But it's not fiction.
TN's pedestrian/crosswalk law is much more reasonable than Oregon's. In OR, a driver is required to wait until the pedestrian has crossed and is safely on the side or otherwise out of the crosswalk. Doesn't matter if it's an eight-lane thoroughfare (three travel lanes each way, plus a center/left-turn lane and a dedicated right-turn-only lane) and they started from your corner, you're supposed to wait until they're on the opposite sidewalk. And the jury's out if the pedestrian is crossing both ways and goes from one crosswalk to the other without ever stepping onto the curb; the way the law is written, you might have to wait for that, too.
In practice, "one full lane over" is usually good enough, but if you have a traffic cop with a stick up his @$$ -- or a monthly ticket/fine quota to meet -- they'll pull you over in a heartbeat.