@I will start with a quote from an unlikely source, a Medford, Oregon, provocateur, internet troll, and Trump-supporting Republican, Curt Ankerberg. He left these words in a comment on this blog on Sunday:
I own four guns. I also have a concealed permit. My guns are for home protection. I don't carry a gun when I'm out in public, but I legally could. The situation doesn't call for it, and it's asking for trouble if I do. . . .You don't fuck with the police, particularly if you are carrying a weapon. . . If I were Trump, I'd bring in the military, and stomp out the paid rioters. You don't fuck with the police.
Readers can draw two takeaways from Ankerberg's comment. One is recognition that a large segment of MAGA Republicans welcomes Border Patrol and ICE rough behavior. A Reuters/Ipsos poll reports that 23 percent of Republican think Trump's policy is not strong enough. They consider Renee Good and Alex Pretti to have gotten exactly what they deserved. The violence is on-brand for Trump.
The other takeaway from Ankerberg's comment cuts the opposite direction. Ankerberg -- and Trump administration spokespeople -- said to leave guns at home, that they don't belong around police.
Republican officeholders defend an absolutist view of the Second Amendment. They argue that guns are the way citizens protect themselves from tyrants who might take away your freedom. Guns are peacekeepers. A good guy with a gun is how you stop a bad guy with a gun. What better place for good guys with guns than at trouble spots?
Both Border Control Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino and FBI Director Kash Patel were sharply critical of Pretti for exercising his Second Amendment right. Patel said:
"You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It's that simple."
Trump's people are scrambling to walk this back, but body language of the shooting of Pretti is more persuasive than words. The world saw it. You can be shot by Trump's agents on first glimpse of your gun.
Trump realizes he is losing support both with swing voters dismayed by ICE's roughness and with gun rights supporters objecting to the notion that gun possession is grounds for summary execution.
Trump changed the Bill of Rights, but this messaging error may restore them:
-- Under Border Patrol and ICE standards, the First Amendment right of speech, press, and assembly exists so long as you don't say anything objectionable or video-record officials. Then it is obstruction of justice. You are subject to being killed in a scuffle that ICE initiates.
-- The Fourth Amendment right of privacy for your person, possessions, and dwelling exists in theory, but don't exercise the right in the context of ICE enforcement and demand to see a judicial warrant. If you resist you can be accused of obstructing justice and be killed in the scuffle. Comply.
-- The Second Amendment right to carry a firearm exists -- as long as the gun is locked away and not carried where police might see it. Police are free to see a person carrying a weapon as a bad guy and a lethal threat. As Ankerberg put it, "You don't fuck with the police." Police are free to take your guns from your cold, dead hands, just as the poster says.
Trump's political base accepted the loss of the First and Fourth Amendments, but has finally become uncomfortable with the loss of the Second. The claim that the Second Amendment protects the other rights might turn out to be true after all.
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I'm amazed that the pollsters went to all that trouble looking under rocks to find that 26%.
ReplyDeleteThe irony is that 2A absolutists I have known over the years, and many writers on pro-gun media feeds, have described what ICE is doing now as an example of the kind of tyranny 2A is designed to protect us from. Hmmmm.
ReplyDeleteAs Ankerberg put it, "You don't fuck with the police."
ReplyDeleteRight, unless it's the Capitol police and you're trying to overturn an election. Then you're a "patriot."
When Peter quoted me above, he removed part of my statement. He cherry-picked. Police don't know me, or someone else who walks the streets carrying a gun. They don't know if I'm dangerous or not. They just see a guy carrying a gun. Police are human beings that fear getting shot, so when they see a citizen carrying a gun they don't know if that citizen is dangerous or not. They are not going to allow a stranger with a gun to get near them, and possible hurt them. I know that I'm not dangerous, but the police don't know that. You can't say that everybody on the street is harmless. So, police need to be cautious. Finally, if the police gave me an order, then I'd follow it, and not try to fight with them like Pretti did.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that people shouldn't be allowed to strut around with guns in public, but accusing Pretti of fighting the police is a crock. Four or five of them knocked him to the ground, beat and kicked him, took his holstered gun and then shot him multiple times in cold blood. And by the way, they weren't police; they were masked thugs.
DeleteNone of the videos show that Alex Pretti unholstered let alone brandished his weapon. He was taken to the ground by border patrol after trying to help a woman being accosted by border patrol, being pepper sprayed in the face for his compassion. After all that, he still did not reveal his weapon. The Feds discovered his weapon, they disarmed him, and then they shot him multiple times.
ReplyDeleteShow me a video that refutes all this.
Might does not make right.
I carefully read this frame-by-frameanalysis of videos of the Pretti shooting. It’s clear to me that it was a chaotic mess of poorly trained unprofessional ICE agents reacting, incompetently and reflexively to the presence of a gun.
ReplyDeleteGiven what we know about ICE agent state of training, you would have to be either crazy or stupid or suicidal to bring a gun into a situation where you are in close proximity to an incident of physical violence by ICE agents.
I do not absolve the ICE agents of responsibility for their incompetence and panic. But I really wish that Pretti had had the good sense to keep his distance and continue filming. He’d still be alive today, and no one would know that he had been carrying a gun.
What the frame-by-frame analysis clearly shows is that Pretti had been knocked to the ground by a gang of thugs, beaten, disarmed and then murdered. That has nothing to do with incompetence. It has to do with the type of assholes they're recruiting and the attitude of impunity they're instilling.
DeleteI posted a link to the analysis. I read it without prejudgement.
DeleteI doubt that Mike approached it with the same open mindedness. Reflexive disagreement is not conducive to useful discussion.
What's your point? The analysis clearly depicts a cold-blooded murder. I have no disagreement with it.
DeleteIn the comment above, I was Anonymous by mistake.
DeleteThe analysis does not “clearly depict” any such thing as "cold-blooded murder."
Deleteit depicts a chaotic, fast-developing situation that was over in a matter of seconds. One officer shouts that Pretti has a gun. Possibly that same officer grabs the gun and moves away with it. It is not at all clear that the officer who fired the first shot noticed that the gun had been removed from the situation by the other officer.
Did that officer panic and start shooting in an moment of panic over possibly being shot himself? Did he decide to shoot even though he knew there was no reason to do so out of some kind of malice?
There is nothing in those videos that would allow you to distinguish between those two possibilities. Only pre-existing prejudice could lead you to be that sure about what happened.
You need to watch the video and pay attention. The first agent to shoot Pretti shot him in the back while several others had him down. After he had been shot several times and was lying motionless on the ground and it was obvious the gun had been removed, two agents shot him six more times. A jury should decide whether it's murder or not, but they'll never get the chance.
DeleteI paid better attention than you did. I focused my remarks on the officer who took the first shot, and what he might have been thinking.
DeleteYou are doing what critics of law enforcement frequently do. You are taking advantage of your leisurely ability to indulge yourself in hindsight. Officers, who are feeling in danger of their lives, have fractions of a second to react and decide what to do.
Did they get it wrong in this case? It looks obvious in hindsight. But maybe not so obvious if you put yourself in their position with half a second to decide, and with the possibility of your own death if you get it wrong.
Officers are people too, and they deserve empathy just as much as anyone else.
You're making lame excuses for the inexcusable.
DeleteYou’re making lame nonsequiturs with no cognitive content.
DeleteMakes me wonder how the Rittenhouse story would play out on the streets today. I bet very differently- and he’s held up as a hero by the Right.
ReplyDeleteAfter it played out on the streets, he was was duly charged and It played out in court, where he was acquitted. "Differently" is right--he was openly armed, guarding private property AGAINST armed protesters who attacked him first. Ashli Babbitt remains the better subject for comparison/contrast here IMO.
DeleteOne of the protesters who was shot by Rittenhouse not only was carrying a pistol, but pointed it at Rittenhouse, which was why Rittenhouse quite justifiably shot him in self-defense.
DeleteThe perception of how this played out; whom to blame , misses the larger and more structural problem. Trump wants everyone to know that he's a bad ass and will do WTF he wants to get his way. Congress? Is that even a thing? We can argue about these incidents forever but nothing will change until the chief idiot dials it back.
ReplyDelete