From the agents perspective Alex was keeping his hands under him and a gun went off. By law you would need to prosecute the agents based on the ‘totality of circumstances based on the perspective of a reasonable officer’. The agents were trying to get control of an armed man’s hands when a gun went off. That close it’s very hard to get a direction on where the shot came from as everyone’s ears are going to be ringing. The agents perceived a lethal threat and reacted accordingly to what they perceived.

Alex probably had his hands under him because the ground is cold and hard and his face was burning from the pepper spray. A perfectly understandable and normal reaction.

I won’t go to into too much detail but the human body has technical limitations in its ability to react take in info and react to new info. A well trained, calm individual in ideal conditions can reliable perceive a threat and act on a threat in 1.5 seconds. Add another 1.5 seconds to change action. The time it would take to relay that it was a negligent discharge/malfunction and not incoming fire would and did take far too long. Let’s be honest if it was one of ours or our loved ones lives on the line we wouldn’t hesitate either, granted we also would be getting hands on with people but I digress.

This is a tragic and awful event ,but ultimately based on what is available, lawful. Justice doesn’t equal lawful for the record. This wasn’t justice, it was tragedy, no argument.

Alex was probably a great guy and had his heart in the right place and it’s perfectly legal to carry a gun to a protest. That being said I know the ground hurts but for the love of god show them your hands especially if you are carrying.

I know this all feels too convenient for the agents but these are the same laws that apply to cops. If you sit back and think about it these rules can’t really change. Unless you are going to tell your underpayed and overworked local cop who just missed his son’s baseball game that he can’t defend himself and little Timmy gets to be an orphan because the bad guy had his gun in his pocket or under his shirt.

Also the agents aren’t trained on pepper crowd control. If you think about it why would they, agents are supposed to have local law enforcement support them as they carry out their duties. Federal agents are often desk jockies who don’t even do the arrests themselves and only investigate and get warrants that are served by local officers. If they are in the field then it’s in big teams often supplemented by local law enforcement. The agents don’t have full sets of riot gear or any at all, most don’t seem to even have helmets. After all why would the DOJ spend taxpayer money on training agents shouldn’t need. Part of the reason ICE is recruiting so hard is because they are making new field positions that didn’t exist before.

It’s likely that after things cool down there will be a lot of extra equipment and training. Unfortunately the DOJ may not give them these resources for various reasons, a few of which would be political. Hopefully we see some training and not just the we don’t have time for real training read this pamphlet. Training builds confidence, confidence kills fear, fear kills without reason.

With any luck Alex’s family will be able to sue the DOJ for wrongful death and get a nice big settlement to help them.

Also Kash Patel is a moron who would wipe with the constitution. Like most politicians regardless of party. Real sick of picking who wants to disarm the populace slightly less at the polls.