alt Hacker NewsHaving the right to do something does not make it safe.
Americans have the right to carry a pistol. But carrying a pistol while heckling police officers and touching a police officer who is performing their duty, sounds deadly to me.
Can we agree that the deceased had a right to carry a pistol? Can we agree that the deceased had been heckling police officers? Can we agree that the deceased had touched a police officer?
Nothing he did warranted death. But he did choose to put himself in an extremely dangerous position, moreso by touching a police officer than by carrying a pistol. But in any case don't carry a pistol when you are out looking for confrontation, especially with police. Even if you're right, you're still dead.
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> Even if you're right, you're still dead.
Yes, this is the entire point: the left is saying "the government shouldn't murder citizens for exercising their legal rights", and the right is saying "if you exercise your legal rights, it's your fault if the government murders you" (or at least "that's the risk you run").
If American patriotism has anything at all to do with valuing freedom from tyranny and oppression, then the right-wing mindset ("you might have the 'legal right' to film an officer, but the state might murder you for it") seems aggressively un-American. Specifically, if you have "the right to do X but the government might murder you for doing X" then you don't really have the right to do X by definition.
A 'right' in this context by definition means government (agencied) will not persecute you for the activity protected by this right. If that's not the case you don't have the right at all, period.
Note though, I do not agree with this particular right (that of bearing arms, visibly so, at a protest), but the so called right leaning people are very enamored by this one and were very vocal about it just yesterday. Suddenly those same people seem to be equivocating about it now.
The people who were supportive of bringing assault rifles to contentious public rallies are now falling over themselves to blame Alex Pretti.
Touching a 'police officer' had nothing to do with the killing. Had he touched his own behind the same thing could have transpired. What killed him is the political support for ICE to be beyond accountability and the license for violence.
In this atmosphere anyone killed by ICE is automatically a homegrown terrorist, if by nothing else, by presidential fiat.