keith

CTLawyer – in fact in 1785 they DID have semi-automatic weapons. They were however very expensive and were not profitable to make which is why people didn’t have them. The technology existed. I think the Supreme Court also has been clear that regardless of what you or I think, the Bill of Rights is a statement of personal rights, and specifically (regardless of what you or I think) the second amendment has been repeatedly confirmed by the SC to be an individual right, not a group right. Finally all the laws that people pass are relevant ONLY for law abiding citizens. Ridiculous magazine limitations affect only you and me – not criminals. Criminals will have rifles. And full capacity magazines. The question is not will the law remove them from criminals hands. They are ALREADY prohibited from possession (felons are prohibited). So regardless of what laws are passed, criminals will have these weapons. The only question is – if there is a bang on your door in the night and a home invasion – do you want to defend your family or do you want your only option to be prayer and hope they don’t mean you harm. G-d gave us saichel. We are obligated to go to doctors even though healing comes from Him. We are obligated to work even though parnassa comes from Him. We are obligated to become familiar with self-defense even though protection comes from Him.

Personally I think you are making a mistake and I think you should get the skills necessary for self defense. But that is your decision not mine and I appreciate that in this country we are free to disagree.

jackk –
We don’t know each other but on this you are simply wrong. Liberals and democrats are absolutely against private ownership of guns. You may not read or watch the news but this is absolutely incontrovertible. I don’t know if your level of observance precludes reading the secular news and watching the news but there probably is no statement less controversial than that. Perhaps that liberals and democrats generally advocate for abortion and conservatives against. But there aren’t many issues as black and white as gun ownership. Once side wants it abolished (in general) and the other advocates for greater (responsible) ownership.

As regards a “certain type of gun,” presumably you are alluding to rifles. The statistics of gun deaths in America however is as follows: The vast majority – between 2/3 and 3/4 of gun deaths in this country is suicide. I think no one thinks that removing guns from law-abiding citizens will meaningfully alter the suicide rate so the majority of gun deaths would be unchanged. The next greatest category is known criminals (gangs, drug dealers, etc). Then a much much smaller number is people who are not known gang members and criminals shooting someone. By far, handguns are the weapons used in the vast majority of gun deaths. By far. In fact if I remember correctly (FBI statistics on murder), I believe knives are used more often than rifles in murder and yet no one in this country is talking about knife control. In Britain however where it is difficult to obtain guns, their murder rate is also high and from knives so they actually ARE talking about knife control. IIRC, I believe the number of people killed from rifles in this country is similar to those killed by hands and feet.

Always ask questions-murder is something that will always be reported. I live in California. A lot of people do not report graffiti, assault, and thievery, because they do not believe the police will arrest the perpetrators and do not believe the prosecutor will prosecute. I guess we have to go with the best numbers that we can but I think much of the population is disillusion about the willingness of leftist prosecutors to go after crime and often do not report. I think this is occurring all over California. Not sure about New York.

It’s not only Jews. Im pretty well versed in firearms. The government in medium to large cities in USA have abdicated their responsibility to enforce the law. Crime is through the roof. Violent crime is not reliably prosecuted. EVERYONE in medium to large cities is realizing the government is not protecting them and that they themselves are responsible for their safety and their families security. And it’s true. No one is coming to save you if you are the victim of a crime.

The funny thing is liberals want guns too and all of a sudden they don’t want them to be restricted to them – just to everyone else.

Hi. Yserb – see responses below.

Even accounting for suicides, violent deaths by deadly weapon in the USA are on par with countries like Somalia. Places France, Finland, Australia, and other countries with heavy gun control, have a percentage of a percentage of violent deaths that the US has.
Criminals in the US have easy access to black market guns because there are so many gun in the US. So allowing unlimited guns for law abiding citizens just puts more guns in the hands of black marketers and criminals

First, if you remove suicide and remove gang on gang violence, there is not very much gun violence here. Any gun violence is bad, but the former two categories illuminate a very great proportion of gun deaths in this country. Obviously, there will be more gun deaths here as compared to England or Australia, as they have no meaningful gun possession. That is not the important metric. The important metric is moderate. in this country, we see crazies murder people with guns, but in England it is knives to the extent that they are talking about outlying knives and asking people. Do they really need to have so many knives? People are people. And people murder. The overall murder rate is what is most important, not the narrower gun murder rate. In fact, London and New York have similar murder rates. London, in fact surpassed New York recently, even though there is no significant number of guns there.

I’ve spoken with people who are into dangerous weapons. They come in all shapes and sizes. By and large one common thread is their inability to explain why people need more than one pistol with limited rounds and limited caliber for self-

I have to say, I am extremely skeptical of that. I doubt you include police officers and similar in that. I have taken many training courses from police officers and soldiers. The likelihood that you will keep your cool in such a situation and accurately return fire is small. When there is a police involved shooting the majority of rounds miss the intended target and go somewhere else. And that is train police. If you have three people on a home invasion and you are as accurate as the police, you probably need at least 30 rounds. The reality is firearms and magazines. Last a very long time. The bad guys have them. No one is talking about taking them away from the bad guys. The laws that you and other people are talking about will have no effect on bad guys. Any new law will only affect law abiding citizens.

On a city-by-city basis statistics show no significant difference in break ins for cities that have a lot of guns per-capita than cities that don’t. So the idea that more guns means your family is better protected because criminals are too scared to break in, doesn’t have the data to back it up.

Unfortunately, there are no good statistics. What I mean by that is organizations that are funded to study. The subject are undoubtedly leftist. It would be like asking about the science of abortion. You would first need to know is the study funded by Planned Parenthood or from the Catholic Church. If it is funded by the first, you would expect a certain outcome regardless of the truth, and if it were funded by the latter a different outcome, regardless of truth. The media and academic centers want to disarm United States citizens. There’s no valid reason to trust their data. With that said, there are certainly many defensive gun uses. I think everyone agrees that it is very rare in a defensive can use that a gun will be fired. Usually once the criminal sees that the intended victim as a gun, the attack stops. If I am attacked, I would certainly feel more comfortable being trained, and having firearms rather than all of the advantage on the side of the criminal. I don’t understand why people want to disarm, law-abiding citizens and leave them vulnerable to criminals.

It is an issue of pikuach nefesh because (as I have been repeating time and time and time again) the more legal guns there are, the easier it is for a criminal to get their hands on one. So yes, limiting legal guns in the hands of law abiding citizens is an issue of pikuach nefesh because that would mean less criminals with guns
The argument that we need guns to defend ourselves against the evil US of A holds no water. If the government decides to turn against its people, we’re done for one way or another. Guns aren’t going to turn the tide on an army fighting on their native soil. Just look at the Bundy ranch and what happened when a banda meshugoyim went against the FBI. If you want to look at it from a statistical standpoint, make a cost-benefits-analysis. The current reality of gun culture continuing to take lives is a much higher cost than the small possible benefit that guns will save lives in a very hypothetical apocalyptic future.

Everyone wants to decrease gun violence. Everyone wants to decrease murder. There’s literally no one who speaks publicly who disagrees with that. The question is which is the smarter decision. Let’s say we have around 300 million guns in this country. They are all over. You cannot go back in time and change the past. You can only decide based on reality. Being a smart guy, what would be your prediction as to the consequence if they the government outlaws guns? Few people will turn them in. Just look at the New York State requirement for rifle registration. Nobody complied. Let’s say that you do pass such a law, and every law abiding citizen complies with it. No, not a single law abiding citizen has a gun. How does that change the matter? Obviously it does not. None of the criminals will have turned in their guns. You’ve just disarmed all of the law abiding citizens . I think it would be much more likely that they would be a dramatic increase in crime because the criminals no there will be no consequences to raping and murdering innocent people.

The authorities in California and New York have already decided largely not to prosecute crime. The obvious consequence of that is out there for everyone to see. Look at Portland. Look at Seattle. Crime skyrocketed. Don’t tell all the criminals that none of the citizens are able to defend themselves anymore.

Everyone agrees pikuach nefesh is important. It’s just that the solutions proposed by the leftists seems to me to exacerbate the situation. I think if you’re solutions were enacted, you would find many more people attacked and murdered. Not less.

Strong recommendation for everyone on this chat. Get in contact with people in the community, spend time with them, and learn about firearms and hunting in self-defense. More or less all of the arguments against firearms show clear unfamiliarity with them in unfamiliarity with the Firearms community. Avira – everyone I know who hunts eats their meat. I don’t know a single person who hunts and does not make use of the meat. Hunters are the most pro environment people I know because maintaining a healthy environment is necessary to be able to continue to hunt. Every one I know, is a thoughtful steward of the environment and of the animals. they are very strict in how to hunt and want to shoot and very strict for what is humane and what is not humane. If you are not certain of a good quick kill, you do not pull the trigger. If there is a concern that the shot is not clear and the animal will run and suffer you do not take the shot. So much on this chat shows that people have thought about the process but really know nothing about firearms or the gun community or the hunting community. If one is going to have an opinion about it, I think it would behoove everyone to spend time with people who actually use Firearms. Again as previously contact Gunsite in Paulden Arizona. Take a trip and learn about Firearms. Strongly recommended.

Yserb

To be fair, you really cannot compare statistics on a state by state basis. Crime is really not a state by state problem. It is a city by city problem. The crime level in Compton California compared to Beverly Hills compared to Mammoth Lakes are radically different. They are simply not comparable. You need to compare city by city. there are also a lot of confounding factors. I would expect crime rates are very high where people put bars on their windows. Does that mean people should not put bars on their windows to decrease the crime rate? Of course not. One is confusing correlation with causation. The bars on the windows are not causing the high crime. It is because of high crime people choose to put bars on their windows.

In summary gun violence in this country is mostly suicide that is miss characterized. Nearly all the rest of the gun violence is from gangs and drug dealers and similar known criminals in bad areas. I would suggest that before the police disarm law, abiding citizens, they disarm the criminals first. Realistically, there is a solution. The solution is That there is a relatively small number of people who are responsible for the majority of violence. The police know who they are. The DAs can prosecute them. Violent crime is largely a phenomenon of democratic run blue cities as mentioned before. The police know who the perpetrators are. If they arrested the non-criminals, and the DAs prosecuted them, and put them in jail , the problem with largely disappear. The problem is we know this is the correct solution but the people responsible or not willing to prosecute the criminals. For those who want to take away the firearms of law-abiding citizens I think a good analogy would be that there is a small number of reckless, drivers or drunk drivers who cause accidents. we should make cars illegal and prevent anyone from driving a car because of a small number of bad drivers. Considering the number of guns in America, probably around 300 million, if guns caused violence, we would expect to see conveyance on a catastrophic level. And yet something like 99.999% of gun owners have never been involved in gun violence. The solution is to arrest, prosecute and jail. Bad guys, not take away the right of self-defense from law abiding citizens.

Next they talk about banning A.R. 15‘s. There’s nothing special about an A.R. 15. It is the same as any rifle. So when you say A.R. 15 you really mean rifle. Rifles are responsible for a very very small minority of gun deaths and overall a tiny number of deaths annually. bending rifles will not have a meaningful change in gun deaths. If I remember correctly, Hammar’s cause more deaths than rifles, so if one is really worried about the number of rifle deaths, you should ban hammers first.

For work, I work as a physician. There is no downside to donating. They sedate you. They stick a big needle in your pelvic bone and draw out the stem cells that way. I’ve never had it done personally unfortunately as what an amazing mitzvah that would be. But other than being sore for a bit, there should be no downside at all.

Hi, Midwest. re: “Where does anyone get the whacky idea that requiring background checks, age limits, etc. is going to lead to the “government seizing all guns?”

The “common sense” restrictions of course would not have prevented any of the sensational shootings we see in the media the last few years. All the recommendations made here would not have prevented the previous shootings and will not prevent future shootings. They are for theater and of course are not meant for criminals. They are meant for the law abiding citizens who do not shoot people. And so the problem is not addressed.

The only way to prevent shootings would be to remove guns from the hands of citizens. A reasonable guess regarding the number of guns in the United States is somewhere in the large ballpark of 300 million. Most guns do not deteriorate to the extent they no longer are reliably functional. So in a country of 300 million guns, 99.999999 percent of which are used lawfully, an infinitessimally small percentage used illegally, how do we prevent guns from being used illegally? Only by seizure, unless I’m missing something. Most people will not comply. Thus the only way I see America removing guns from its citizens is house to house seizure. It will not be too many houses before one citizen will refuse.

Do you see another way government removes guns from its citizens? I don’t. My imagination may not be great enough though.

Hi. I’m actually surprised by the number of apparent shooters on a religious website. It seems to me that the people who are the most pro-gun are people who shoot and the people who are the most anti- are the people who just don’t have much experience with guns but address them in a more theoretic way. The question everyone must act before acting in any capacity about anything is – how will this action address the issue? Will it help or will it prevent the problem we are trying to address. We also need to recognize that any law change affects only law abiding citizens, not criminals. So all laws passed regarding this emotional subject will affect good guys, not bad guys. It is unlikely any proposed law will affect the shooters in recent history. So we must be honest and accept that this is all theater, designed to make us feel good and not designed to stop shootings.

If you are serious about stopping gun shootings, from FBI statistics, relatively few deaths come from rifles. Most come from handguns. So if you are serious about gun deaths you are talking about government seizure of all guns, not “assault rifles.” Of all deaths from guns, the vast majority, almost 3/4, are suicides. So we are not talking about those. The vast majority of the remainder are gang-on-gang or similar (criminal on criminal) shootings. So in terms of real, horrible, scary gun deaths, this is a tiny minority of the recorded gun deaths. If you are serious about stopping gun deaths, and as relatively few are of the sensational deaths in the recent news, we should look at what really causes death in America. Cars. Knives. Televisions (falling on people – actual FBI statistics). Hands. Feet. We should consider outlawing those too.

Regarding the following statements:

1. No more sales of assault-style weapons.

People have already addressed that assault weapons are fiction. The definition is rifles that have two or more features. Features include adjustable stock and pistol grip. Everyone knowledgeable in firearms agrees this does not alter lethality of the weapon and these features are purely cosmetic. So this does not address any current issue.

2. No more sales of high-capacity magazines

Magazine, like guns, are nearly forever. They don’t disintegrate. There are probably somewhere around 300 million guns in the country. Without the military or police doing house-to-house searches and home invasions they are not going away. Second, it takes under two seconds to switch out a magazine and place a new one. Restricting magazines therefore will only affect good guys, not bad guys. It will affect only those who obey the law, not someone with murder in his heart. And even if magically all the standard size magazines (not high capacity – standard size) went away, it still does not change that it takes under two seconds to change magazines and that will not alter how many people die.

3. No gun sales to anyone under 21

In CA at least, the law is you must be over 18 to purchase rifles and over 21 to purchase handguns. I think most of the recent shooters either have been over 21 or obtained their weapons illegally and so this really would not affect much. In addition, if you are over 18, have a job, are independent, etc., how can the government justify restricting your constitutional rights? Can you restrict free speech until you are 21? Unreasonable search and seizure?

They also called on lawmakers to pass legislation to make background checks universal on all public or private gun sales,

Would not have affected any recent shooter.

the creation of a national database of people banned from buying guns,

There are lots and lots of people who are just regular people on the national no-fly list. Prominent journalists. Ted Kennedy (when he was alive). It is easy to get on the list without reason and nearly impossible to get off. If this list is anything like the no fly list, there will be many people who lose their constitutional rights because of an incompetent government. And again, people knew the Parkland shooter was unstable but no one followed up on it. This would not have affected any of the recent shootings.

sale of guns to those under 21,

See above.

and a ban on assault-style weapons,

Just silly and from people who don’t understand firearms. See above. An unserious response.

high capacity magazines

See above. Not something a serious or logical person would consider.

and bump stocks .

“Bump stocks” is a technique to obtain rapid fire. There is no special stock necessary. Recently a company or companies came up with a special stock to make this easier. It is simply a way of holding a rifle to allow it to bump against you and use the reaction force to bounce the gun against the trigger. Again, for someone who knows about firearms, this is a silly argument. Bump stock is a technique, not a device. You can’t outlaw a technique.

I’m a Californian and my taxes are supposed to go up under this. With that said, CTLawyer, don’t you think it is unfair that state taxes are deductible from federal taxes? That is, if you live in a state that chooses high taxes, why should a state that chooses lower taxes have to subsidize your government’s profligate spending? If one state chooses to be more prudent or more conservative with its finances, why should they have to subsidize a spendthrift state like my own?

Next, over 2/3 of people claim the general deduction and do not itemize. For them their taxes will go down. For the wealthy – particularly in high tax states and despite what many liberals say – their taxes will go up.

I think ALL our taxes should go down. I think our governments’ expenditures are about 1/3 waste, 1/3 corruption, and 1/3 efficient use of taxpayer dollars. We do not have a revenue problem. Government revenues go up year after year. We have a spending problem. EVERYONE’S taxes should be lower. And our government should learn to provide essential services and waste less money.

Hi everyone.
Actually American Whisky (e.g. bourbon) is unfortunately potentially problematic.
Many of the American distilleries were founded by and are owned by Jews. I read a fascinating article. When they came over to this country they found that many industries were closed to them. So they opened distilleries. Many of the very Southern, non-Jewish sounding distilleries are actually owned by Jews but the names of the distilleries and whiskies sound southern and non-Jewish for marketing (of course!). It turns out many are family owned and do not sell for Pesach. So many American whiskies that should be kosher are in fact not permitted. Sad but true!
Keith

When I’m on a plane I go to the back and ask a flight attendant if I can take a few minutes to pray and please let me know if it’s a bad time I’ll do it elsewhere. They’ve always been very kind and eager to help. I believe you can daven Shemona Esrei seated if necessary. I had to look up if I could do it as a passenger in a car and found sources it is OK if necessary. I wear yarmulke and tzitzis out only on weekends, not for work. I go to the gun range, probably the only Jew there, always with yarmulke on and tzitzis out and everyone is very nice to me. I think most Americans are respectful toward people observing their religion, as long as we are not obnoxious about it.
(I am BT and not well educated so take it with a grain of salt.)

Reb yid What do you mean?

I’m a BT and every day realize how ignorant I am. So take it with a grain of salt. I am pretty certain you know more about everything yiddishkeit than I do.
It seems to me we need to bring Moshiach. He has not yet come not because someone ate treif or watched TV on Shabbos. Or davened or studied without enough kavanah. It seems to me the Temple was destroyed by us because of sinas chinam and so without ahavas chinam we cannot bring Moshiach. So for me personally, an ignorant Yid who yearns to do H-shem’s will and looks forward to Moshiach coming every day, I try to make as much chesed as I can . “Your gashmius is my ruchnius.” I try to daven with kavanah and try to study daily, but I am pretty sure that H-shem doesn’t think that is where I will make my name. I’m pretty sure my path at least is through Ahavas Chesed. This is coming from someone who is trying to learn, but who recognizes he (me) is ignorant, but striving to become better.

What do you think? What is your plan to bring Moshiach?

What is wrong with cowboy boots? They are very comfortable. And stylish.

Actually you have to be careful about bourbon. Many (most?) bourbon distilleries are owned by Jews and my understanding is most do not sell for Pesach. So a lot of bourbon is actually treif as it is owned by Jews over Pesach.