The Worm Is Turning

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The current ICE Age is starting to show signs of cracking and melting.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to stand in the background and listen as two middle-aged, gun-owning, rural white men discussed the current situation in Minnesota.  Both of the men, who were avid Trump supporters a year ago, seem to have undergone a rapid and seismic shift in their political perspectives of what is occurring in America.  Their primary grievance is the federal government's shifting position on the right to keep and bear arms = particularly the "bearing" part.

Alex Jeffrey Pretti, the ICU nurse who worked at a VA hospital in Minneapolis, had a gun on his person when he went out this past Saturday morning to be a "legal" witness to the ICE operations in his city, that's true.  The gun was in the waistband of his trousers, and there is no known video footage showing him brandishing that weapon at any time - nor has the government claimed that he had it out threatening anyone.  There is video footage of an ICE agent removing the gun from Mr. Pretti's waistband and taking it away before ICE agents fired multiple shots and killed him.

The video footage of his murder was airing on social media even before the administration grabbed their microphones and began describing the off-duty nurse as an "assassin" and a "terrorist,"  lies which flew in the face of the video footage that the world was already seeing on the internet.   FBI Director Kash Patel grabbed his microphone and began ranting about the fact that Alex Pretti had brought a loaded gun with an extra clip of ammunition to the scene of the protest.  Patel said:

"You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want.  It's that simple.  You don't have that right to break the law and incite violence."

Nurse Alex Pretti was carrying a registered weapon which he was duly licensed to carry.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Gun Owners of America (GOA), the two most prominent gun rights organizations in the US, quickly asserted that the Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms while protesting, a right, they argued, that the federal government must not infringe upon.

(It must be assumed that Kash Patel, the current FBI director who was appointed by Donald Trump, forgot about Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who showed up at a rally in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August of 2020 with an AR-15 assault-style rifle and killed two men at a protest and wounded another.  Rittenhouse and his weapon were both ushered off the scene and sent home by police at the event.  The boy, Rittenhouse, was later charged with homicide, attempted homicide, and recklessly endangering safety.  He claimed self-defense and was acquitted on all charges.  Donald Trump later hosted Kyle Rittenhouse at Mar-a-Lago.)

Kash Patel did not mention MAGA golden boy Kyle Rittenhouse as he lashed out against the dead ICU nurse saying the man's death was he own fault because he brought a firearm to a protest.

Gun right's groups were not happy with the FBI director's betrayal of their basic right to be armed anywhere they damn well please, and, more importantly, ordinary gun-owners like the two I overheard talking yesterday, weren't happy either - and their resentment was deep - and it felt as though it would definitely linger past the next election.

ICE took that ICU nurse's  registered weapon, one that he had a legal right to carry - even to a protest, and then ICE killed him.   That's what the videos show, and that's what rural gun owners saw - and no amount of bald-faced lies from politicians is going to change that.

Cell phones show the world what is really happening on the streets of America.  They are the "weapons" that ICE fears most.  Don't leave home without one!