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Believe your federal government, not your own eyes. If you are big on the right to bear arms, make an exception this time. These are the Trump administration’s messages after a horrible Saturday in Minnesota.

Homeland Security agents shot 37-year-old Minneapolis ICU nurse and researcher Alex Pretti dead on Saturday morning in broad daylight. A few things are already clear from the best video angle out now: Pretti was directing traffic on a Minneapolis street. He was filming agents out in public, as is his undisputed right. An agent approached Pretti and then shoved a woman, hard, into a snowbank. Pretti put his hand up as he went to assist the woman. The masked agent who threw the woman to the ground draped himself over Pretti, then was joined by several of his colleagues. They got Pretti to the ground, struggled for a moment, and shot him until he was dead. Was this death sentence the result of sheer incompetence by agents who had no idea how to handle conflict? Was it a summary execution? Or, as the Trump administration would have you believe, did the dead man have it coming?

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