After ICE agents gunned down peaceful protester Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the government smeared him (and previously, Renee Good) as a terrorist. In truth, he never drew, much less brandished, his gun. If he had a chance to come back to life and do it again, would he avail himself of his Second Amendment right to defend himself against random masked goons who might or might not be government agents?
Renee Good Meets Alex Pretti
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The TMI Show" talk show. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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If Mr Pretti had merely appeared with gun in hand, the only differences in the ultimate outcome would have been
a) there would at least have been some entry wounds on the front of his corpse
b) said corpse would have weighed twice as much as his recently live body for all the slugs of ICE weapons in it
c) the death toll would have been >>>1, due to protestors in the general line of fire mowed down by shots that had missed him.
Suffice it to say the collateral damage would have been MUCH worse if he had managed to “use” his gun by firing a shot or shots before becoming human hamburger.
Although many rational thinkers mock the (almost always) fantasy of the “good guy with a gun” stopping the next mass shooting, not as many good thinkers take it to the next level. Outside of cliche westerns and similar fare, one good guy with a gun is (almost always) incapable of stopping a whole bunch of bad guys with guns.
To my right as I type this is my copy of James A. Michener’s “Kent State.” I don’t claim to know what Alan Canfora’s thinking would have been about this, but the current events with ICE are sufficiently similar to what happened at Kent State to make a couple of assumptions (on my part):
First. Just like with Kent State, plenty of people are saying Good and Pretti got what was coming to them. We have a long tradition of heartily slapping thugs on the back, even when they’re killing unarmed people. You can find the interviews online of the good, cornfed ‘Mericuhs who think the Kent State protesters “had gone too far.”
Second. Kent State triggered a lot of protests. But a lot of that action was due to an already activated public. The Vietnam War had just finished its three deadliest (for the U.S.) years. The war was already beginning to wind down, having peaked in 1969. Kent State was simply one more horrible thing for an already fully mobilized resistance to latch on to.
I don’t see anything even remotely like 1960s/1970s resistance going on. High school students walking out of classes? Skibidi toilet 67. College student strike? So what? Trump will make one tweet about Barack Obama and that will completely distract everyone. Or maybe he’ll demand that he receive an Olympic medal? We used to have Walter Cronkite. Now we have David Muir’s biceps as he reads blurbs between ads for pharmaceuticals.
Yeah that’s a whole lot of TLDR for me. Have you considered taking this abundance of energy you have and doing something useful with it?
Nope. You see, ab, — can I call you ab? — just like you don’t take any of this seriously, preferring glib sarcasm to actual engagement, the left also lacks any capacity to do anything. So I present a meaningful contribution and watch the responses. Regularly, I get confirmation that I am not wasting my time by not wasting my time.