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>If you're going to instigate and be the aggressor, not stopping until the police arrest you for being a jackass, having a gun on you probably isn't very smart

This is what you initially replied to. You don't *really* have the constitutional right to obstruction, noncompliance with lawful orders, and/or resisting lawful arrest. And doing all that, even with a legal firearm, is pretty dumb (exceptionally dumb with an illegal firearm). Firearms are force multipliers, just a fact of life that their presence heightens the tension of any interpersonal conflict.

Protesting with a gun is all fine and good. Blocking traffic is a crime. Interfering with execution of a warrant (what Pretti et al. were there to do)/obstruction is a crime. Refusing to get out of the street when directed by law enforcement is a crime. All of that, particularly the last one, are crimes that will result in an officer removing you from the situation.

None of those are constitutionally protected, and Pretti was engaging in all of those. "Oh but he helped a lady who was doing the same and got pushed out of the road" okay, she was committing crimes too. So I guess another obstruction and/or aiding and abetting while we're at it. So given all of those circumstances, if you're going to white knight for the criminal because "m'lady," then you deserve to be arrested. If you do it while carrying a Sig P320... well, if you carry the Sig P320, you're kinda announcing to the world that at least *you* think you deserve to be shot. Kidding, but adding a gun to the mix, legally possessed or not, just dumps on risk you could have avoided by not being a jackass in the first place (as CanticleFlugelhorn pointed out). And the gun being the P320, notorious for discharging unexpectedly, exponentially increases the risk further.

Still - deserve to be shot? No. Playing with fire. Yes.

>I protest with a gun I would probably also block cops from punching a lady

[LSS: you're creating a false equivalency](https://youtu.be/DCiaqJvbW_A?si=UrfAEKThIcEUUf3R&t=643) - it's not like this lady was innocently walking down the sidewalk and ICE came over and thumped her and mild-mannered Alex, who was just minding his own business, swooped in to save the day. No, they were all committing crimes, they were directed to move and didn't, so the moving happened for them, at which point the lady fell down (she was pushed to get her out of the street and AFAIK never punched) and things rapidly descended into chaos which ended in an unfortunate, but lawful shooting.

I linked BH because he and Donut are voicing basically my same philosophy of responsible carry. In the back of your mind you have to acknowledge that any conflict is now rapidly escalated to potentially a fatal conflict. And you should generally try to avoid that; Alex Pretti didn't IMO. Maybe he thought it was a worthy cause to die for; I don't, and I'm fairly confident most reasonable people agree (dying for foreign rapists and drug dealers is just gay).

`editedit: I just finished watching the BH video and holy shit I didn't realize how aligned we'd be in our takes. But again, I consider him a pretty reasonable person, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised.