Wondering

Are They Okay With This?

On Saturday January 24, 2026, five federal officers working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement executed another Minneapolis, MN resident. His name is Alex Pretti. The names and faces of these federal officers have not been released to the public. The man these not-yet-named and not-yet-unmasked people executed was white and carrying his gun. It's Minnesota. The federal government is saying this execution is justified because this white man carried his gun. As you may know by now, Alex Pretti did not draw his gun from its holster. He just...had it.

And the federal government--members of the executive branch, the government agency in "charge" of ICE, politicians aligned with the current presidential administration--is saying his execution is justified because this white man carried his gun.

This assertion from the country's conservative party reveals that if I were a white man or you are a white man:

• it is okay to own and carry a gun even if you may kill your partner or former partner (my gosh, so many),
• it is okay to own and carry a gun even if you may kill your children (again so many),
• it is okay to own and carry a gun even if you may enter an elementary school and massacre children and their teachers (the country crossed a threshold in 2012),
• it is okay to own and carry a gun even if you may stalk and kill a child who is walking home from the corner store my still heartbreaks,

BUT

• it is not okay to own and carry a gun if you protest of the federal government. Then and only then is it not okay to have a gun.

So many white men have guns. Like a lot of guns. Are they okay with this?

A pretty big tenet of conservatism is that a white man can own and carry a gun even if he has a history of reigning terror and harm on his own family, on his own community [1, 2]. But that same white man does not have the right to own and carry a gun to protect his own family and his own community from the State...?

Again, so many white men have guns (And quite a few white men have many, MANY guns). Are they okay with this premise? Unless they see this second execution of a white Midwestern citizen as an aberration. How many exceptions will they carve out to avoid coming to this conclusion?

I'm just wondering.

[1] In 2024, the Supreme Court upheld a federal law that bars anyone subject to a domestic violence restraining order from legally possessing a gun. "Although the ruling was a victory for the Biden administration, the majority rejected the federal government’s argument that Rahimi could be deprived of his right to have a gun because he is not a “responsible” citizen. “Responsible,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “is a vague term. It is unclear what such a rule would entail,” and there is no support for such a rule in the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment cases." Source: SCOTUS Blog

[2] From Psychology Today: "Incidents where a man kills multiple family members occur about once every five days in the U.S."