Stephen Hunter is the author of 20 novels, including the Bob Lee Swagger series, and is the retired chief film critic for the Washington Post, where he won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism. His most recent novel is Gun Man Jackson Swagger. Late last night Steve wrote us that “this Alex Pretti thing has me all buzzed up. It’s SO familiar–the ‘victim’ instigated the event; the federal agents had about two seconds to respond; the backlash was immediate and well-planned; the media compliant as rent boys.” Steve sees the case as “the tragic but blameless police shooting of a dim liberal-dogooder driven by self-righteous vanity.” He notes, however, that “something has yet to be mentioned, and I think it must be.” He writes:
The killing of Alex Pretti has excited the media in powerful ways until they’ve slathered the truth under a smear of white goo. But these folks are so brilliant it’s all but astonishing that they’ve failed to note one thing.
While Alex Pretti may or may not have been the secular saint he is depicted to have been, he went into action not equipped to save lives but to do battle. Was he going into combat against the Waffen-SS or perhaps joining up with Chris Kyle? Whatever, he was fully massacre-equipped.
I’ll skip the choice of weapon—large state-of-the-art 9 mm service pistol, with double stacked magazine—and I’ll pass on the presence of at least two of those hi-cap magazines in gun with spare in pocket.
Instead let’s look at something unnoticed aboard the Sig P320 AXG “Combat,” as the factory called it. What’s that odd cube atop the slide? It’s a battery-driven red dot optical sight, and although its presence doesn’t mandate massacre—I have several on my guns and only massacre paper—it is at least highly provocative.
If the man had carried a Sig P365, the current hot lick in self-defense, it would be hard to argue that mayhem was his goal. That one is too small, too hard to shoot accurately, and its size means it recoils excessively. Had he a .38 snub nose, even a run-of-the-mill Colt Commander, they too put him out of the game. They all make sense for self-defense but nothing more dramatic.
He had, instead, the maximum professional killing machine, its potency amplified by the optical device. In that 2-ounce, 2”x2” cube atop the slide is a laser which projects a small but brilliant red dot onto the lens. Adjusted correctly, the point of impact indexes to the red dot. Peer through the lens, put the dot where you want and you’re John Wick. No wonder they’re ubiquitous in the infantry and marines, in police holsters, on shooting ranges.
So equipped, a man could take out an enemy squad, drop a hostage-taker or put 17 holes in a 4-inch circle at 25 yards. A man could also sweep a crowd of targets, press the trigger whenever the red dot passed over one, and in less than 10 seconds deliver 17 fatalities. For RN Alex Pretti, it suggests a whole galaxy of questions that must be answered before anyone knows anything.
