In a heated interview with CNN‘s Dana Bash on Sunday, Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino said his agents were the real “victims” in the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis protestor.

Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old Veterans Affairs nurse, was killed by Border Patrol agents on Saturday. In videos of the deadly altercation between Pretti and several agents, he can be seen placing himself between an agent and several women that he was shoving. Pretti is sprayed with a chemical irritant and then wrestled to the ground, where one agent repeatedly hit him in the head with the irritant’s metal canister. Pretti, who was legally carrying a firearm, was fatally shot by agents while on the ground.

DHS immediately painted Pretti as a threat, saying that officers feared for their lives because Pretti was legally carrying a firearm. Multiple videos of the shooting contradicted the official line that Pretti was threatening agents. On Sunday, Bash pressed Bovino for evidence “that he was intending to massacre law enforcement.”

When Bash repeatedly asserted Pretti’s right to carry his firearm, Bovino made the bold claim that Pretti forfeited his Second Amendment rights via his actions.

  • saimen@feddit.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    3 hours ago

    “When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”

    – Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

  • ClownStatue@piefed.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    173
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    13 hours ago

    Weird thing is this is the “government takeover” the 2nd amendment nuts have been screaming about for generations. Not at all surprised that they’re mostly silent now. Also not at all surprised it their own political party who’s doing this.

    • krashmo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      39
      arrow-down
      10
      ·
      13 hours ago

      I keep seeing this take and it’s half thought out at best. First of all, I don’t think it’s true. There are plenty of armed citizens not sympathetic to ICE in any way. They are reasonable adults who have not felt it necessary up to this point to engage in a last resort effort that is likely to endanger tens of thousands of people at minimum. You may think we are already past that point, and we may well be, but you can’t deny that wanting to be sure it is necessary before taking up arms against their countrymen is exactly what a reasonable adult with a firearm should do.

      Second, if what you are saying is true and there are no reasonable citizens with guns then the logical course of action is to buy a gun, organize in your community, and practice your 2nd Amendment rights as you see fit. They don’t just apply to conservatives despite what Bovino is trying to argue. Complaining about the past isn’t going to change the future so if you see a gap, fill it.

      Now I don’t know if you’re American or not but I do see this sentiment from Americans on a regular basis and that is who am I addressing.

      • null@piefed.nullspace.lol
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        33
        ·
        12 hours ago

        I don’t think they meant “all gun owning citizens” when they said “2nd amendment nuts”. I think they were talking about a particular type of person who bases their whole identity around owning guns to fight against the government.

      • breezeblock@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        12 hours ago

        I don’t think he’s saying the second amendment tells you use your guns to shoot people when there is anything you consider tyrannical government oppression, only that having the guns are supposed to preempt that problem in theory — and the theory is clearly invalidated.

        The fact that traditional second amendment proponents (the NRA) have backed away from that theory and now side with the proto fascist tyrannical government demonstrates the argument was always bankrupt and was never a principle in practice.

        That said — you correctly point out that there still room for people to actually start using said guns for shooting, which is indeed the logical next step. Putin is shitting himself laughing.

        • Asmodeus_Krang@infosec.pub
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          10 hours ago

          Fire extinguishers don’t ward off fires. You need to actually use them after the fire has started. The same goes with firearms and tyranny. They don’t prevent it, but they can be used against it.

    • a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      9 hours ago

      These people have been led around by the nose their whole lives. The same people who have been shouting this nonsense at the 2nd losers are the ones who were inevitably going to pull this.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      13 hours ago

      Weird thing is this is the “government takeover” the 2nd amendment nuts have been screaming about for generations.

      No no no. You’re thinking of the Civil Rights Act. That’s what they were complaining about.

      • ozoned@piefed.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        8 hours ago

        Yeah, but the picture is obviously a casual tour of the Capitol. That’s the lie they’ve told and lies before that and this is another round of lies people want to believe. And I’m sure I’ll hear it spouted when I’m out and about.

        • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          edit-2
          8 hours ago

          They were mostly peaceful, allegedly, and nobody got hurt (if you don’t count the people that got hurt or killed).

          You’re a terrorist assassin deserving of execution if you help a woman who was shoved over in the snow, but attempting to climb through a secure and barricaded in the face of multiple people with their weapons drawn then being shot makes you a tragic victim worth of a multi-million dollar settlement.

          War is Peace, also

  • xenomor@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    114
    ·
    14 hours ago

    The fascist will say anything, regardless of reality, logic, or even internal consistency, to advance his self interested power grab and all of the violence it requires.

    • n4ch1sm0@piefed.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      24
      ·
      13 hours ago

      Wielding postmodernism as a weapon; the only truth to then is their truth. Fucking psychopaths.

      • nymnympseudonym@piefed.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        12 hours ago

        … which is why they love religion so much

        Objective provable reality is secondary to “Belief” … “Faith” … “I feel it”

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    12 hours ago

    “Rights aren’t rights if they can be taken away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country: A bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news, even badly you know that the list gets shorter and shorter” - George Carlin

  • betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    13 hours ago

    Cool. Do I get to decide which rights apply to Bovino and his bullshit army now? What he’s doing doesn’t sound much like “…support[ing] and defend[ing] the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…” or “…bear[ing] true faith and allegiance to the same…” so his actions ought to have consequences too.

    Before the reply: No, I will not elaborate, fed.

  • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    12 hours ago

    This administration is playing with fire by trying to blame this on the gun that the man was legally carrying and licensed to own.

    The 2A people in MAGA are not happy, there’s a little civil war brewing in r/conservative between the bots and the 2A supporters.

  • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    13 hours ago

    rights are a convenient fiction from the enlightenment era, when the Europeans were trying to atomize and analyze freedom.

    you’re free to carry a weapon.