Already the National Association of Retired and Active Federal Employees, among others, has urged Congress to separate the Pretti affair from whatever else it does about funding the government. Meanwhile the Pretti incident produced the rare and awkward tableau of federal employees contending with one another in a deadly manner. Federal employees can generally participate in non-partisan protest activity, with the usual proviso that it be on their own time. Certainly the last 12 months have been extremely stressful for federal employees, a couple hundred thousand of which lost their jobs. Law enforcement officers should treat lethal actions as a last resort, when their own lives or lives of innocents appear at stake.