Several days ago, ICE agents murdered Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

As is now customary, Stephen Miller interrupted his usual torrent of racist anti-immigrant abuse on Twitter to call out Pretti as an "assassin" and a "domestic terrorist" in an attempt to frame this as some kind of standard police action.

These lies are as transparent as they are ridiculous, but as we've come to realize over 10 years, that's the point. Plausible lies don't reinforce fealty to the regime. The lies must be preposterous, both as a show of power and domination, and to ensure that belief in the lie filters out anyone who is willing or capable of rejecting it when exposed to contradictory information.

I need to add my tiny voice to the chorus of those calling to abolish ICE. This is important enough that I've made it the title of this post, even if it's not directly about abolishing ICE or even about documenting their crimes.

ICE is not an immigration enforcement agency, they are a paramilitary force under the direct control of an autocratic leader whose primary objective is ethnic cleansing. This might sound shocking to the senses, but this is a straightforward interpretation of their activities.

The machinery of fascism is an area of interest of mine, but not an area of expertise. I've still got a lot of reading to do on that subject, but thankfully we still have access to the voices of experts on the subject like M. Gessen.

What I really want to discuss is a detail in the killing of Alex Pretti that has become a major part of the narrative. Pretti was carrying a gun.

Conservatives have latched onto this as a provocative act. Because they've said so within the framework of their preposterous lies, they've not said so with any credibility. Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino was quick to claim without evidence or investigation:

This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.

Kash Patel claimed, incredibly, that:

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.

Conservatives have argued for decades that Americans do, in fact, have that right. The NRA's reading of the 2nd Amendment is not about well regulated militias, it's about the private right to gun ownership.

But even this was posture. It was the old kind of lie; a Goldwater lie, a plausible lie. When the Black Panthers armed themselves and started patrolling the streets of Oakland to monitor police brutality, Ronald Reagan himself signed a gun control measure into law in California immediately to put a stop to it.

As Adam Serwer paraphrases, the true conservative interpretation is:

The second amendment is when conservatives can carry guns everywhere, but if anyone else has a gun we can kill him on sight.

Liberal commentators have been pointing out the hypocrisy that conservative gun boosters who have spent years booking appearances after mass shootings to remind everyone that gun owners were unfairly maligned simply for exercising their rights were now claiming that Pretti's gun was proof of intent to harm. This is because liberals still believe in hypocrisy as a moral failing, unaware that Mitch McConnell killed it in 2020 in exchange for Amy Coney Barrett.

The establishment media thinks this is some kind of novel flip-flop on gun rights. As the dried out husk of the Washington Post published in a post originally titled "Minneapolis shooting Scrambles America's Gun Debate":

Some gun rights backers cite Alex Pretti’s firearm as a justification for his killing, while gun-control supporters dismiss its relevance.

I wish there was a more charitable read on this article, but I really think you need to be an imbecile to write this or think it represents any kind of change in posture on the gun debate. Despite that, this "what kind of topsy turvy world are we living in!" narrative seems to have some juice.

The right question to ask yourself is under what framework could the Right consider Pretti's firearm justification for his killing while lionizing Kyle Rittenhouse? The only ones that make any sense reveal the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment as a protection from government tyranny to be a laughable farce, as these rights only seem to apply when the weapon is used to reinforce state violence.

Alas, there's an important sense in which I agree with the conservative read on this event. In some small way, I even agree with Bovino's judgement of the situation. It doesn't make me happy, but it gets to the heart of my staunch anti-2A stance on private gun ownership, and it's the lie that has been central to the conservative project of preserving private gun ownership.

Carrying a gun is a provocative act. It is a threat of violence.

I'm very sure everyone knows this on some level. It's baked into our culture. Our art, our films all know this and can speak the language of this threat fluently, from modern gangster noirs to old fashioned westerns.

Carrying around a gun is not equivalent to carrying around a banana. That's why there is handwringing around the term brandish, which is a legal term that describes using a weapon in an intimidating way. For a gun, this could mean as little as bringing the fact that you are carrying a gun to someone's attention.

Conservatives believe that only favored peoples should have access to the right to this kind of threat of violence. That's why they passed the Mulford Act in California.

But in order to preserve this right for themselves, they've had to couch this in the language of rights and tyranny, they've had to use the considerable leverage of the constitution, and they've had to lie about what it really means to carry a firearm.

The midst of a fascist reign of terror probably seems like a stupid time to call for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment, but I don't think we defeat fascism from within through the use of violence. Like Batman said, guns are the tool of the enemy.

Maybe I'm being naive, but I break with the extremes of the left on this matter, who think fascism's defeat in WWII is a blue print instead of a cautionary tale, who think the only way to eradicate fascism is by hanging it from an Esso. This thirst for righteous violence feels too similar to the fantasies of online right wing chuds conditioned by Hearts of Iron to think anti-ICE protesters are a part of the comintern.

Broad gun ownership persists only through the acceptance of a stupid lie we all know is false, and through concerted efforts that have for decades impeded any attempt at interpreting gun violence in any way that might promote gun control.

In 1789, the year George Washington started his first term, fewer people lived in the United States than now live In Brooklyn + Queens.

If the 2nd amendment is about tyranny, it's transparent nonsense. What are we getting in return for this fantasy? 50,000 gun deaths a year and hundreds of school shootings?

If it's about private gun ownership, it is pathetically anachronistic and not fit for purpose. You're more likely to be shot if you own a gun, because the person most likely to be shot by your gun is yourself.

Jan 26