hbiden@onlyfans.com wrote: Thu Sep 11, 2025 6:37 am understandable. guns are making a comeback.

wsj wrote:Alex Pretti Was Part of a Growing Gun Culture in Minneapolis
The blue city, now in a battle with the federal government, has seen a surge in armed citizens in the past several years

By Dan Frosch
Jan. 31, 2026

MINNEAPOLIS—Heather Zielinski had been friends with Alex Pretti for nearly a decade when she discovered something new about him.

By then, she already knew he wasn’t like most guys here. He wasn’t a crazed football fan or a flighty 30-something bachelor, but an outdoorsman who loved mountain biking away from the city. Still, she perked up last year when she looked around his living room and saw a holstered handgun on a shelf.

Zielinski, a 44-year-old Realtor, was intrigued that Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse at the local veterans hospital, would be a gun owner.

But Pretti wasn’t an outlier.

Gun ownership soared in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, after the unrest surrounding the 2020 murder of George Floyd and during the pandemic crime wave that followed. Applications for permits to carry guns, which in Minnesota allows one to carry a gun openly or concealed, nearly tripled. Newcomers of all kinds bought guns. Pretti was among them.

Pretti legally had his 9mm gun with him, concealed, a week ago, on the frozen streets of Minneapolis. Videos shared across social media show him filming federal agents and then being confronted by them. They appeared to spray a chemical irritant at Pretti and another person. In the moments before shots were fired, Pretti was on the ground, surrounded by several agents. Footage appeared to show one took a handgun off Pretti before he was shot at least 10 times, according to a Wall Street Journal video analysis. On Friday, the Trump administration said it was expanding the investigation into the killing of Pretti, including an examination of evidence including his gun.

Pretti’s status as a gun owner, his opposition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics and his support of Democratic causes have scrambled familiar political alignments: The circumstances of his death have sparked an outcry from both liberals and gun-rights groups.

How Pretti came to own a gun as a Minneapolis resident is also the story of transition and contradiction in the city itself. Across Minneapolis, many people haven’t been surprised he had a firearm.

Yes, this is a blue city, but on the ground, views are more complicated. Minneapolis had forever been changed by the spring and summer of 2020, when protests and lootings swept the city, and an overwhelmed and short-staffed police force led many locals to believe they needed to protect themselves.

Zielinski knew people who had purchased firearms in the years that followed, including a soft-spoken neighbor she never imagined buying one. A gun shop catering to left-of-center gun owners popped up in South Minneapolis, a progressive stronghold, part of a rise in liberals buying guns in recent years.

In Minnesota, this rise met the arrival of ICE. After Pretti’s shooting, the Liberal Gun Club, which has its own Minnesota chapter, released a statement saying “the right to keep and bear arms is fundamental” and calling for a thorough investigation. The Minnesota chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association—the chapter is primarily based in the Twin Cities—encouraged its members to reach out to local “ICE watch groups” after the Jan. 7 shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent.

Transcending politics
Much like the city he lived in, Pretti himself didn’t fit neatly into a box either. He loved his job at a local veterans hospital, which gave him freedom for bike rides on weekends, Zielinski said. She and Pretti traded recipes and book recommendations. He gave her “Red Mars,” the first of the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson.

At his condo last fall, Pretti was preparing for a biking and backpacking trip in Utah. Biking gear and supplies were splayed around the living room. Zielinski was curious when she saw the gun and asked about it. He told her he had received a permit to carry one.

The two talked about the value of carrying a weapon into the wilderness. Pretti had also participated in demonstrations following Floyd’s killing and got the permit about three years ago, his ex-wife told the Associated Press.

“So you’re a Republican?” Zielinski asked.

“No,” she recalled his saying.

“Democrat?”

“Nope,” he replied.

“An independent!”

He chuckled and demurred, Zielinski remembered.

Zielinski herself was generally disenchanted with both political parties. Federal records show Pretti made several small donations through the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue, including $25 to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) in early 2025. But Zielinski got the sense Pretti wasn’t particularly politically minded either.

“We had too many other things to talk about,” she said.

That changed in December, when the Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Metro Surge, sending 3,000 immigration agents and officers to Minnesota.

Signs went up in front of businesses and homes decrying ICE’s presence. Neighbors activated hundreds of informal text and Signal chat networks—part of a protest culture that grew after Floyd’s killing to encourage residents to be “observers” who document law-enforcement interactions or rush to unfolding scenes.

It was one of these encounters that led to the shooting of Pretti, in front of a doughnut shop, by two federal agents on Jan. 24. Trying to help a woman on a familiar street, Pretti was involved in a struggle with agents before he was shot.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused him of domestic terrorism, alleging that he sought to inflict “maximum damage” and kill law enforcement. Video footage would contradict Noem’s claims, which received bipartisan criticism.

Zielinski saw the videos on social media and learned that it was Pretti when she saw a photo of him wearing his nursing scrubs. “This is my friend,” she said over and over again.

She couldn’t bring herself to watch a new video showing an earlier altercation between Pretti and federal agents. He is seen kicking at the light of an SUV before immigration authorities wrestle him to the ground—as several people yell “stop,” and honk car horns.

The day after Pretti was killed, Zielinski started handwriting letters to members of Congress about Pretti. Each day since, she has written a few more.

She sits at night, searching her mind for memories of her friend, and their lives in a Minneapolis that now feels far away, the letters scattered across her table.

In February, Zielinski will follow through with her own plans to get a permit to carry a gun.

When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun

zorg wrote: Tue Feb 03, 2026 3:55 pm

When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun

Gramsci wrote: Thu Feb 05, 2026 11:20 am

zorg wrote: Tue Feb 03, 2026 3:55 pm

When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun

Well, statistically you’ll be disarmed and shot by the person kicking in your front door

It’s kinda cute those lyrics are from a privately educated son of the British elite ruling class.

It was probably a shotgun for hunting pheasant.

Gramsci wrote: Thu Feb 05, 2026 11:20 am

zorg wrote: Tue Feb 03, 2026 3:55 pm

When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun

Well, statistically you’ll be disarmed and shot by the person kicking in your front door

It’s kinda cute those lyrics are from a privately educated son of the British elite ruling class.

It was probably a shotgun for hunting pheasant.