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@Meno I don’t think it’s impossible, just very difficult and it would take a long time. One thing that needs to happen is restrictions on the sale and manufacture of firearms. If there are less guns available in stores, people will own less guns and there will be less guns in circulation and there will be less gun crimes. Right now the approach (which has been heavily based on scripts written by the NRA) for most gun-nuts is “Well, US culture is so messed up, we can’t ban guns because then we won’t be able to defend ourselves from the guns that criminals have because we didn’t ban guns”. Which is all types of messed up.
I mean, the frum velt has been fighting tooth and nail against the inevitable encroachment of toeva stuff into every day life. Should we just give up on it because it’s impossible to change at this point?
@Meno L’azazel with the 2nd amendment. It’s killing far more people than it saves. We have to start somewhere! Throughout this thread several gun nuts have tried to rationalize why everyone needs a minimum of six big loud guns in their house for self defense. But none have yet to give an explanation as to why something small with a few bullets wouldn’t be enough.
@Meno That’s what I keep getting back to. We can’t change the whole culture of a country (really it isn’t the whole country, it’s certain rural areas in Red States) overnight. But we have to start somewhere. Regarding “gun-free-zones”, we have seen time and time again, that armed civilians do little to stop mass shootings. And the more guns there are available, the more likely a mass shooting will occur. But let’s ride with that for a second: You need a gun because American culture is so messed up that there are armed criminals around every corner. OK, I can see the logic. However, what you do not need is high-caliber high-capacity firearms. You need a small revolver. So why don’t we start by banning anything that isn’t small?
@Always-Ask-Questions I question your logic whether that would lead to a slippery slope. The US has the most unrestricted gun laws of any major country in the world and yet you don’t see Australia or Spain telling people they can’t own three microwaves.
@Meno Anyone who thinks that the current American Culture (TM) of the “right” to own as many guns as can be purchased is a normal, logical, not dangerous, in line with the Torah, thing, is not thinking clearly.@DaasYochid I knew a Dutch guy in Yeshiva in Israel once who would always correct everyone’s pronunciation of New York names, from Catskill to Harlem.
OK fine. Two years ago I would have called you a very dangerous person. Now, with most people double and triple boosted and COVID much better understood, you are merely foolish. Listening to what people are saying on Twitter instead of asking an expert. Would you pasken a shailoh based on something you read on Facebook?
@AviraDeArah Yeah, that’s a huge stretch. It’s not a slippery slope to mandating limits on consumer ownership. It’s laws limiting dangerous objects which already exist. You’re just restating the “What if the government goes bad?” argument that gun owners love to push.
@Zetruth I don’t understand your comment. Carlson was fired because he said the same thing all Fox News opinion anchors have been repeating unending for the last 2.5 years?
@AviraDeArah The government already regulates how much of anything you can have in many instances. Generally when the thing is something potentially very dangerous, you need special licenses and approval for each one you want to buy. That is something I would like to see applied to gun ownership. Just like you can’t build a slaughterhouse on private property without a host of licenses and regulations for each slaughterhouse you build. So too with guns.
@menachem-shmei Interesting, I did not know that about Lubavitch. Did Rav Schneerson ZT”L ever comment on that philosophy vis a vis his time learning in Hildesheimer?
@ujm I am welcome to hearing corrections from people who are involved in kids-at-risk, but in my experience boys have always been going OTD far more often than girls.
And as a side note, I found on Statista.com a breakdown of burglary rates per-state per-capita, and a second chart of percentage of gun ownership per-state. New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Arkansas all have 50% gun ownerships (meaning, about every other person owns at least one gun) and the worst rates of burglary and break-ins. New Jersey and New York have only 8% gun ownership (some of the lowest in the US) and are also both in the bottom ten of burglary rates.
This doesn’t prove that gun ownership prevents break ins (the idea being that a criminal will be less likely to break into a house if he knows that people generally own guns) but it certainly adds a nail or two to the coffin of that theory.
@interjection I am suggesting that there is a dangerous trend to minimize the importance of studies that aren’t Gemara to the point where it’s damaging to the children, both when they are young and when they get older.
I am questioning whether girls are going OTD at the same rate as boys. As far as I know that was never the case. Girls (at least in the non-Chassidish non-Modern settings I am familiar with) usually stay frum at a much higher rate.
@AviraDeArah A slippery slope towards what? Not being Somalia? Then let’s go skiing!
@AviraDeArah, so then you would be OK with new laws restricting guns to, let’s say, one gun per household and a maximum of five rounds? Because all this talk and you still haven’t explained why anyone would need more if we’re talking home defense.
@n0mesorah I’m repeating myself, but you flip flopped several times on the situation regarding non-Gemara non-Halacha studies in Lakewood high schools. First you said that they don’t exist because no one wants them, then you said that there are plenty of high schools. And you’ve gone through everything in between.
There are problems in every frum community. Most of them admit it and have long discussions regarding how to fix them. But there are communities that have very blatant open issues that are so big they affect people outside those communities. And people are screaming at them to fix it, but they adamantly refuse to acknowledge that there’s even an issue.
@AviraDeArah So because it would take decades to work, we should just throw in the towel? To be honest, the whole idea of needing a gun for self-defense is like 95% NRA propaganda. (a quick perusing of the magazine rack in Rite-Aid would convince me that I am going to die within the year if I don’t have a four foot long gun that can shoot massive bullets at an outlandish rate) There are very very few cases where someone’s life was saved because they were carrying a gun (excluding security guards and police). And many many more cases of negligent gun owners leaving loaded handguns where their kids can find them and accidentally kill someone. Or where a robbery leaves the homeowner dead, because the crook started shooting when he saw a weapon. Or where a gun is stolen and used in a crime. At the end of the day, the prevalance and availability of guns in the USA kills far more people than it saves.
And at the end of the day, let’s face it. Even if you would buy into all of this no one needs more than one gun for home self defense. And there’s no need to have more than five bullets in it.
Take away the guns currently out there.
Limit their sale.
Limit their manufacture.
Limit who can own them and how many they can own.
@AvirahDeArah @mentsch1 You both miss my point. It’s not about the calibers, it’s about the need. There is absolutely no need for the USA to have five times more guns per-capita than any other major country. And the fact that there are so many guns, means that they are readily accessible to anyone wanted to commit a criminal act. So there is far more violence (yes, even excluding suicides) and violent deaths than any other civilized country! What we need to do is get rid of the guns. I don’t care what that would take.
And if you’re willing to go to war over that (which, let’s be honest, is the dumbest reason to go to war since “I like that mountain over there”), then I guess we’ll just have to see how a stockpile of Mossbergs, AR-15s, Glocks, and M2s in the hands of a bunch of disorganized survivalists will hold out against a single drone strike.
Oh, and @mentsch1? We need guns because of Moshiach? That’s a really bad take. Like, exceedingly bad. I’m just going to ignore it because I have more respect for you than that.
@AvirahDeArah .22 .9mm shmumty shmoo, who cares? Yes, people who are anti-gun generally have less knowledge of guns. Just like frum people have less knowledge of what bands are playing at Coachella. Guns are extremely dangerous. The 2nd Amendment has allowed gun nuts and gun companies to ride roughshod over the USA and put literally over a billion guns readily accessible to any meshuggenah some legally some illegally.
My point is that no one average person needs so many guns and so many bullets. You want self protection? Even with a .22QFB (or whatever it’s called) will cause an intruder to back off. If the intruder is armed, you carrying a gun won’t make any difference, except cause the bad guy to be more likely to open fire.
@Kuvult I am also unclear what you need four guns to defend yourself. You have a single .22 pistol that can shoot five times without reloading. Either the person your defending yourself against backs off when faced with a gun, or they don’t and are shot. Unless you live out in the sticks with a lot of wild animals?
@Kuvult The fact that you (presumably a mentally stable and non-violent person) can get a hold of four guns without problem means that someone less mentally stable and more violent can also get a hold of four guns. Therein lies the problem. Should we take dangerous weapons away from innocent people just because others will use them to commit crimes? YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES I DON’T EVEN UNDERSTAND WHY THAT’S EVEN A QUESTION OF COURSE WE SHOULD!
It’s not so much a question of different conventions of order of operations, but that there are certain contrived cases where the order of operations is different. Like PEMDAS doesn’t tell you what to do for 6÷3/10. Also there are different ways of writing out equations (like ignoring the multiplication sign, or using ÷ instead of a superscript/subscript) that sometimes have different rules of orders of operations. So when you mix and match those signs, you give your equation a level of ambiguity that PEMDAS cannot answer.
@mentsch1 If someone thinks you have too many guns, you have way too many guns. “Gun culture” is like any other hobby, collecting, talking about, using, trading, buying, selling, etc. and in general being very “into” a particular thing. The only problem is over here is that this “thing” encourages the mass production and sale of deadly weapons that allow criminals to commit murders on a much higher rate than they would otherwise do.
Am I nervous that the nice well-adjusted guy down the block from me owns more guns than fingers? No. But I am nervous that because of that guy (and many others like him) people who are less than well-adjusted can just as easily acquire these weapons.
The idea that owning multiple dangerous weapons (when at most one or two would suffice) is somehow a human right has to die. Period.
@mentsch1 If you read my first comment on this thread, I gave a list of laws that in my amateur opinion I would like to see as the law of the land for guns. It’s logical, would save countless lives, and the only opposition to it I’ve seen so far is “But then you would take my guns!!”. Yes, yes we would. That’s the point.
The question is why weren’t they more anti-Trump years ago? Trump has been in the news a lot lately and for some really disgusting things. So should YWN just ignore front page news because they sort-of kind-of lemme-speak-with-the-shadchan like the guy?
@mensch1 I don’t disagree that it would be difficult. I just want to clarify that we are on the same page: much of American culture is bad and dangerous. Gun culture is one aspect of it. We should recognize and publicize how dangerous it is.
@mentsch1 So you agree that we need to get rid of guns in the USA, you are merely pointing out that it would be a long and difficult process, yes? Great. Now lets get that process started by out loud declaring how gun culture is stupid and dangerous and we have to work on eliminating it.
@mentsch1 “Fun” isn’t a good reason for stockpiling dangerous weapons. Sports shooting falls under the category of “fun”. I fail to see how a single low caliber low capacity gun isn’t enough to fulfill the requirements for hunting and self protection. None of these are coherent responses to why gun nuts stockpile dozens of dangerous weapons whose only purpose is to kill many people as quickly as possible.
And yes, other things kill people. Take cars for example. Perhaps you’re right, we should treat guns like cars. Ridiculously expensive to the point where the average family can only afford one or two. Require a long period of training and a license to use that can be revoked at any time due to misuse. Regular inspections and clear identification of ownership. The understanding that, although they are fun, society still needs good ways to go about without them and should be designed so that people don’t need need cars (busses and trains are fine too).
Hashkafically, there are sources that say that a person can die before his time if he were killed. Guns kill people.
Yes, taking away guns would be very difficult, potentially leading to a civil war, if we do it all at once. Which is why it needs to start slowly and immediately. We need strong efforts to get rid of “gun culture” in Red states and neutering the NRA. Soon, with more than a bit of effort, we can move towards the complete abolishment of the 2nd amendment.
To add to what I said in my previous post: many criminals who commit gun-related crimes aren’t yet technically felons at the time they legally purchased a gun. So to with the mentally ill. It can take months, or even years, for a mental diagnosis (if one happens at all) during the whole time the individual is perfectly capable of purchasing a murder stick.
- A gun store that sells a weapon that is later used in a crime is subject to a mandatory closure and full investigation
- Ban all guns that hold more than five shots.
- Ban all calibers greater than .22
- Each individual gun a person buys requires that they show a reason why they need this gun and it must be approved by an impartial anonymous political committee. Turning in an old gun for an upgrade is taken into account.
- Limit the production and sale of guns based on the size of the local population. Gun stores in a zip code cannot carry more than X weapons where X is the population size in that zip multiplied by a factor of no more than 2
In some areas of Japan, people leave plastic bottles filled with water outside their house. When asked, most people will just shrug and say “This is what you’re supposed to do”. When pressed, some people will talk about how water bottles scare off cats (but won’t be able to explain why they want to scare off cats, if it actually works to scare off cats, or if there are even any cats in the area to scare off). But everyone does it, so it’s ingrained in the culture so everyone else does it.
That’s what guns are to some states in the USA. Everyone has guns. Few people can give a good, coherent reason why they need so many guns. Self protection? Hunting? Sport shooting? It’s fun? But since it’s such a massive part of the culture, logic has ceased to be a factor in this question a very long time ago. Everyone needs guns because everyone has guns. It’s as simple as that. And as long as these people are fighting tooth and nail to ensure that an archaic outdated law remains on the books, criminals and mentally disturbed people have easy access to weapons (legal and illegal) that allow them to commit harm on a much larger scale.
@ubiquitin @emes-nisht-sheker You would be surprised how much of math is just conventional rather than a hard and fast grammar. Anyway, like I’ve demonstrated before, just like a sentence can be perfectly grammatically correct and still be interpreted in two completely different ways, so too can math. Which is why when mathematicians write out their equations, they do it in a way that makes it unambiguous.
@jackk You don’t have to go through all of them. Every one of the 34 counts is a variation on “falsifying paperwork”. It’s the same paperwork each time. If he’s not guilty on even one of them (which is exceedingly likely considering how flimsy the case is and the caliber of lawyers Trump can provide) the whole thing falls apart.
@ubiquitin I don’t have a source. PEMDAS is a convention, not a hard and fast rule. The ÷ combined with the “2(” is really what’s throwing the equation since in general when you’re using a more shorthand way of writing it without multiplication signs, you would also put the numerator above the denominator instead of using a division sign. So there’s no real right answer since the notation is odd and there are different ways of reading it depending on who you ask.
If you can keep it at bay with antacids and painkillers (Gax-X, Alkaseltzer, Aspirin, etc.) then you probably just have a sensitive stomach. If it happens regularly and nothing seems to ease the pain, go see a doctor.
@dbrim Why are you defending the actions of this man? Is it so important to people that public figures should be able to misuse funds to pay for aveiros?
These questions are all kind of silly, because the way it was written is ambiguous. It’s like if I asked you “I met to friends, Chaim, and Shmiel, and he gave an apple to him. Who gave who an apple?” In academic and science writing, the author would make sure to either surround everything with multiple sets of parenthesis, or split it into smaller equations so that there’s only one way to read it.
There is a way of writing math problems called “Polish Notation” where you put the operand at the beginning of the problem. It’s how computer code works behind the scenes actually. It has the advantage of not being ambiguous when it comes to writing it out. So “2 + 2” becomes “+ 2 2” and “(6 – 4) x 3” becomes “x – 6 4 3”.
Using Polish Notation, this problem can be either “÷ x + 8 2 2 2” or “÷ 8 x 2 + 2 2”
8÷2(2+2)Same a Clinton, a goy is a goy. The President is not supposed to be a tzaddik gamur, but he/she should have some basic moral boundaries that we can look up to. The actions that Trump took (which there is overabundant evidence for and he himself never denied) go way beyond the pale of what is acceptable in a moral society. Even the most mushchisdikeh liberal would shake their head in disgust at someone who did what he did, kal v’chomer conservatives who are supposed to have Yiras Hashem, and al achas kama v’kama Yidden. We should have, as a whole, refused to support this man once the allegations were too obvious to ignore.
I would vote “No”.
Although the Beit Din Gadol has way too much power, pushing them into this leftist powerhouse that can and will fight the Knesset on everything, Netanyahu’s “reforms” basically cut out their legs from under them and are clearly just his way of trying to stay PM when huge swaths of the country hate his guts.
@n0mesorah It makes all the difference in the world how powerful and influential they are! In many community you say that there are people who break the rules and claim divinity. That’s a problem that can be dealt with by a Rov or trusted person speaking with these individuals and (if needed) openly refuting their claims. However, when the Rov or trusted person is the one making the claims (or amplifying them, or at the very least, not refuting them) it’s a very different issue.
@n0mesorah I do not recall the last time I saw a billboard claiming that the Rebbe Reb Yoel ZTK”L is Moshiach. If you’re trying to compare a handful of possible meshuggenas in every group to some very vocal and powerful people that make up if not a majority than at least a very significant minority of Chabad, you’re being out and out dishonest.
@n0mesorah And yet, again by your own admission, there are very few places in Lakewood that have such a curriculum, and the community pushes the younger kids to go to Gemara-only places.
Look, you’ve moved the goalposts like, seven, times already. You went from “the lack of math doesn’t push kids to act out”, to “these kids aren’t even in high school yet”, to “there isn’t a lack of alternatives in Lakewood” with a bunch of steps in between.
Shakespeare dealt with this issue like 400 years ago. The solution (obviously) if the older sister is having a hard time getting married, is to hire a guy to date and marry her so that the younger siblings can get married.
@n0mesorah Not every group has some that confuse their leader with The Divine. I struggle to think of two. And certainly there aren’t influential people in these groups that believe and encourage such behavior.
@Marxist According to you, shouldn’t computer science PhD students work for the betterment of society, accepting their role as a public servant with no salary larger than the guy cleaning the floor?
Anyhoo, yes it’s true. People with PhDs can potentially get jobs in Wall Street and related industries where they work on developing algorithms and systems to squeeze an extra few milliseconds off of their competitor to place buy orders.
Sheesh, PhD students can make six figures right out of the gate in the tech field.
There’s a simple solution to this argument. @AviraDeArah should find three examples of Chabad Rabbonim that you do not consider messianic instructing people to ask bakoshois of the late Lubavitch Rebbe ZT”L. I’ll give you one for free, the language used on the website of the Lubavitch Ohel HaMeis. There’s plenty more on various Chabad YouTube channels.
Then, @benToiroh should print those up and delete any references to names or associations. Then bring them to three non-Chabad Rabbonim and ask their opinion on it.
@n0mesorah You said at several points that no top mesivta has a “secular” program and many of them that had, shut it down.
Pretty much everyone I know in Lakewood either laments the lack of Mesivtas that teach math and science, or would never send to a place that does. The few Mesivtas that have such programs are extremely hard to get into.
@ujm Depends on the project. Usually it’s a long term thing. Sometimes it’s working out how something needs to be designed. Often it’s debugging, trying to find out why something is broken. Generally it involves a lot of discussion, a lot of programming, and a lot of running things over and over again to figure out how they work or why they don’t work.
@ujm Computer scientist. And yes.
@n0mesorah Just previously you said that almost all Lakewood Mesivtas are only Gemara because of a lack of interest and lack of teachers. Now you’re saying there’s “hundreds” of places. Nu? Which one is it?