Reflections in the wake of the Alex Pretti shooting
- Because the sovereign person is the highest-resolution unit of society—and because the state possesses an inherently asymmetric capacity for coercion—the default posture should always favor empowering the person and restraining the state.
- I strongly affirm both First and Second Amendment rights of the sovereign person (citizen) and reject the claim that these rights are ever in tension with one another.
- Video evidence of the incident in which Pretti was shot shows a clear violation of the principles articulated in #1 and #2.
- Anyone lying—by omission or commission—about #3 is engaging in propaganda.
- I subscribe to the principle of extreme responsibility: one ought to take responsibility not only for proximate causes of negative outcomes, but also for marginal but-for causes.
- In light of #5, exercising Second Amendment rights necessarily invokes extreme responsibility. Bearing arms alters the symmetry/asymmetry of every interaction. To bear arms is simultaneously to assume the capacity to project lethal force and to commit to maximal restraint and self-control.
- The available evidence at this time, which includes video recorded from two angles of Pretti in the days before he was shot, aggressively interfering with and inciting law enforcement and kicking out the taillight of a federal law enforcement vehicle, demonstrates that Pretti was in violation of the responsibilities entailed in number #6.
- Nothing stated above implies that Pretti deserved to be shot. He did not.
- He was, however, meaningfully responsible for the chain of events that led to his death.
- Anyone lying—by omission or commission—about #7, or attempting to erase the moral tension between #8 and #9, is engaging in propaganda.
- The symmetry I drew between Kirk and Pretti in my previous blog post was mistaken, unfair to Kirk, and overly generous to Pretti.
- The highest form of grace is radically asymmetrical.
- Reality is a s*** show, and I am at least as much in need of asymmetrical grace as the next person.
Deliberative Dad 
Hanno, thank you SO, so much for these letters/essays.
I would like to follow/understand your logic better and I need help connecting the dots: can you please explain in some more detail your point #9?
Thanks!
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Thank you for asking this so carefully.
I take the question seriously, because point #9 is exactly where people are liable to hear either more—or less—than I intend.
By responsibility I am not talking about desert. I am not saying Pretti “earned” his death, or that the shooting was justified. I’m using responsibility in the sense implied by the principle of extreme responsibility: that one is accountable not only for immediate causes, but also for marginal but-for contributions to an outcome—even when that outcome is profoundly unjust.
Under this principle, responsibility is neither binary nor zero-sum. Multiple actors can be responsible for the same outcome in very different ways and to very different degrees.
In Pretti’s case, the state—and the individual agent acting on its behalf—bears overwhelming responsibility for the lethal use of force. That responsibility is categorical and asymmetric, given the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence. Nothing I say here reduces or mitigates that fact.
At the same time, Pretti made a series of voluntary choices that meaningfully shaped the conditions under which the fatal encounter occurred. These include the choice to attend the protest at all; the choice to engage law enforcement in an unusually close-up, confrontational, and incendiary manner, as documented in earlier video; and the choice to show up armed.
Each of these choices matters under extreme responsibility because each altered the risk landscape.
Protests are not neutral spaces. They are inherently charged environments, and interactions between civilians and law enforcement in such settings are already asymmetrical. Law enforcement officers in these contexts are operating under elevated stress, compressed decision windows, and institutional incentives that bias toward control and escalation. Entering that space and inserting oneself directly into confrontations is not a morally neutral act—it increases volatility.
That volatility increases further when the civilian is armed.
An unarmed civilian engaging law enforcement introduces one kind of asymmetry: moral and symbolic. An armed civilian introduces another: kinetic and existential. Whether or not the weapon is drawn, whether or not it is intended for defensive use, its mere presence fundamentally changes how an encounter is perceived and processed by armed officers trained to respond to threats in fractions of a second.
This is not a claim about what ought to be true in an ideal world; it is a claim about what is true in the world as it exists.
Bearing arms collapses decision horizons. It compresses ambiguity. It transforms misinterpretation into mortal risk. That is precisely why the right to bear arms must be paired with extreme restraint. The symmetry between citizen and state does not increase when both are armed; the asymmetry becomes more dangerous.
So when I say Pretti was meaningfully responsible, I mean this:
he did not cause himself to be shot,
he did not deserve to be shot,
but he did participate—through a sequence of voluntary, escalating choices—in creating a situation in which a catastrophic failure became more likely.
Denying that does not protect his dignity. It erases his agency.
Holding it does not excuse the state. It preserves moral clarity on both sides of the asymmetry.
Finally, I hold this standard inward as well as outward. If I am serious about extreme responsibility, then I must assume that my own choices—where I go, how I engage, how closely I press volatile situations, what risks I knowingly accept—also shape futures I may not intend and cannot control. That realization is uncomfortable, but I think it is necessary if we want to speak honestly about tragedy without turning it into either propaganda or piety.
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