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Brighton rabbi asks congregants to come to services armed
By adamg on Mon, 06/24/2019 - 8:52am
WBUR reports on Rabbi Dan Rodkin's plea. In addition to retired cops and service members who already have guns, Rodkin is writing letters of recommendation for members who want to get their own gun licenses.
Rodkin began to seriously consider an attack on his congregation after the fatal attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.
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Comments
I hope
I hope someone points out to the Rabbi that Boston is not Pittsburgh. MA is not PA. Having guns present inevitably increases the chance of someone getting shot. The more guns, the greater the chance.
Your logic is bulletproof.
Your logic is bulletproof.
Oh wait, no it isn't. You are actually telling a group of jewish worshippers that they can't defend themselves?
No, I actually am not
I'm saying someone should tell a Rabbi some things that ought to be obvious to him. None of those things are "Don't defend yourselves."
Eh
There's probably a lot more guns floating around Mass than you'd think, and I mean the legal variety.
Just look at the front page.
Literally 4 articles, in a row, about shootings within Boston city limits. 3 within an hour of each other.
And how many were anti-Semitic in nature?
Or were even near a synagogue?
Or even involved legally
Or even involved legally owned and lawfully carried firearms?
Shootings in Boston
I hear ya. It's disgusting. Every single day, "another shooting!, another shooting!" I'm SICK of hearing about it! ENOUGH is ENOUGH! (But, I guess not....)
You just never know what
You just never know what could happen. You shouldn't assume that just because you're in Massachusetts you're safe from shootings.
True
And you're going to be much less safe from shootings if people start carting guns around everywhere.
You don't have to tell me. I
You don't have to tell me. I hear plenty of gunshots almost every night where I live. The reason why so many or our young men who are ending up in gangs carry guns on the street is for protection against other gang members.
Not following the logic
You describe young men joining gangs like it's an inevitable, normal thing. I never get why people say they need a gun "for protection." What that really means is that they are preparing to shoot and kill another person. Unless you are at war (and maybe that's the way it is on the streets) having a gun doesn't protect you. Using a gun might, unless the other guy "protects" himself first.
Why don't you go interview
Why don't you go interview the BPD Gang Unit and see how they feel about it.
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Accidents happen
If you don't have a gun on you, you don't have gun accidents.
For every self-defense use of a gun that causes injury there are 22 non self defense uses - suicides, accidental discharge, kids playing with them, etc.
I hope the Rabbi checked with his insurer before he made this request.
MA exceptionalism
You're being unfair to Pittsburgh. I suspect you probably haven't spent much time there. It seems to be a special Massachusetts thing where people pretend everyone here is good and special and the rest of the country they haven't spent any time in is filled with inbred rednecks. The lesson to take from Pittsburgh or any of these mass shootings is that it really only takes one crazy idiot to cause serious harm. Orlando is an extremely gay friendly town and look what happened with the Pulse night club. Expanding access to guns is certainly not the answer to the problem.
It's not a Massachusetts thing...
...to point out that there's quite a hunting culture in the Pittsburgh area and not so much in the Boston area.
Hunting Culture
I grew up with hunting culture - it doesn't necessarily make a difference.
I was taught to handle weapons with strict safety and respect for their lethality. I was told time and again: if this weapon will kill an animal larger than you, it will kill you or another human if you do something stupid with it.
The difference comes in when non-hunter Meal Team Six types fetishize their weapons and worship their lethality.
Can you define "good ol' boy" for the class please?
You make it sound like no one ever went into the woods with a six pack and a rifle and came out with no beer, no bullets, and no buck to show for it?
Your description
Implies they went in with no bullets and came out with no rifle.
Not the best hunter, eh?
Hunting
How many of these mass shooters have hunting licenses? I suspect very few.
Pittsburgh v Boston
Not commonly known is that when the Klan got run out of Mobile after that lawsuit, the tri-state area was a popular point of relocation. Mass is different in that regard, however we did nurture the marathon bombers and it remains to be see who else. While ideologically different - I’ll leave the obvious unsaid - there is/was a similar impulse to destroy. It seems redundant yet necessary to state that systems that produced such resentment and anger in the Tsarnov(sp?) brothers haven’t materially changed in the last five years.
I’d much rather take the class A than join in a ceremonial hand-wringing session after the next act of violence against an innocent congregation.
That’s one smart rabbi.
Right...
Tell that to the 40 + people who were killed in New Zealand.
If they were armed many lives could have been saved.
False
And how many more people would have been shot when people started firing indiscriminately in the confusion. Or how many more people would be killed when emotions got the better of them during an argument that otherwise wouldn't be physical.
The more guns, the more shootings. Guns have never prevented violence and they never will. The more people with guns, the more violence there will be.
Pittsburgh is a progressive and educated city
just like Boston. It has Carnegie-Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh, and a number of smaller, less well-known schools. It has a high-tech industry and even has a transit system called The T. It is also stunningly beautiful, with its three rivers and its steep hills.
The murders in Squirrel Hill do not in any way represent what Pittsburgh is, any more than the Marathon bombing represents what Boston is.
The people who say and things like
'Boston is not Pittsburgh' and 'MA is not PA'' are, in my experience, not from here (many come from 'flyover' country, and have disdain for where they come from); or, they've lived pretty sheltered (comfortably middle class, upper middle class upbringing). It is not common for natives of Boston or MA, outside a few demograhics) to say things like 'Boston is not Pittsburgh ' and 'MA is not PA'.
Your experience
Your experience has led you astray. I was born in Boston and have lived most of my life in the area. I have also spent some time in PA and Pittsburgh, although I haven't lived there, and don't want to. Whether you know it or not, the relative ease with which your neighbors can buy guns does have an impact on your life, and on your relative safety. It's one of the reasons I choose to live here, rather than some other places.
You are one of the exceptions I mentioned
I say again: most people from here do not look down on or think we're superior to other states and regions. And yes, I've been to PA, Philly (many times) including the rural parts. I dated a girl (sorry; woman) for 2 years who graduated from Carnegie Mellon. I went one short visit to Pittsburgh with her. I liked it.
And all kinds of firearms are a lot more common here than you may think. Legal and illegal.
But you didn't
You didn't mention any exceptions in your original comment. You said "The people who say and things like ...'Boston is not Pittsburgh' and 'MA is not PA'' are, in my experience, not from here."
You might be correct that there are more guns here than I think, but I would caution you not to have opinions about things I think, when I haven't said anything about those things. Your mind-reading powers are evidently not working, as witnessed by your assumption that I'm not a native. Want to guess my age next?
People can and have traveled
People can and have traveled to commit crimes.
My rabbi would be horrified by this suggestion
and I think most others in this area would be as well. More guns == LESS safety.
Lawfully carried guns are
Lawfully carried guns are like fire extinguishers for murderers.
Being helpless and defenseless when confronted by evil doers with no respect for the value of life or the law isn't helpful.
Disarming potential victims does nothing to protect them from criminals.
When we as a people have a history of thousands of years of persecution and victimization it is madness to think anyone that wants you disarmed and defenseless has your best interests at heart.
Who's this we?
I get the concern - my father was part of a special squad of temple machers who patrolled the grounds after some rocks got thrown through the windows, decades ago, and yeah, I'm old enough that I grew up seeing numbers tattooed on people's arms, but "good guys with guns" in a confined space are not necessarily the answer.
Can you point me to statistics
OK. Can you point me to statistics on deaths due to accidentally discharged fire extinguishers?
I can point you to statistics about deaths from not having fire
extinguishers.
I can also point you to statistics about negligent gun use, intentional criminal gun use, and legitimate defensive gun use.
Spoiler alert: legitimate defensive gun uses dwarf the others.
For a conservative estimate, check out Table 11 of page 12 of
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fv9311.pdf
Something like 50,000 defensive gun uses per year against 10,000 murders.
And for a higher estimate, something like 1 million per year:
https://reason.com/2018/09/04/what-the-cdcs-mid-90s-surveys-on-defensi
You picked the wrong cherry
From your first link, "467,300 non-fatal victimizations." That's almost a half-million people shot, who didn't die. Which, to use your word, dwarfs defensive gun use. Not even mentioned in that report are accidental discharges causing injury or death, or suicides.
Here's a fun table:
State firearm death rates, 2016. Rate per 100,000 population. Guess which state has the lowest rate? MA, with 3.4 per 100K population. Nobody else is under 4. PA is at 12. Even with the alleged huge numbers of guns that we're supposedly surrounded by, our stringent gun laws are saving lives.
Fire Extinguisher, eh?
How many people have been killed when someone got mad and grabbed their fire extinguisher?
Except that they are not
For every defensive use of weapons, something like 22 people get extinguished.
Does not sound very effective to me.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-sel...
https://www.npr.org/2018/04/13/602143823/how-often-do-people-use-guns-in...
Keep clicking
The link to the BJS report on that NPR article shows that between 2007 and 2011, there were something like 50,000 defensive gun uses per year against 10,000 homicides (something like 40% of which were lawful, but that report doesn't have that breakdown, you'll need to look at the NIH lethality statistics for that number).
That's a conservative estimate. If you click through the mess about Kleck and find his more recent analysis of CDC data (not his own NPR-deemed "controversial" report), you'll get a number like up to 1 million defensive gun uses per year.
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That's cute
When was the last time there was a "public shooting" around here?
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That's because they're sheltered people
who for the most part grew up rich and cloistered, and don't think they should share in the responsibility for their own safety.
Yes it would be nice if all the weapons everywhere could go poof and disappear tomorrow and we'd all bliss out to the sound of the Beatles in peace and fucking brotherhood.
Unfortunately, that is not human nature and that is not the world you'll get.
Responsibility for one's own safety?
Statistics say that means not having a gun around at all.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-sel...
Statistics say lots of things.
Statistically, I'm safer not driving. Except that I'm about just as safe not driving as I am not driving drunk. Lump together drunks with normal people and you get all sorts of numbers.
Statistically, the gun in my safe has a nonzero chance of spontaneously breaking out and shooting me.
In the real world, it has no chance of spontaneously breaking out and shooting me.
Government of the People by the People
I know this is hard for a "roman" to understand, but even if you're not walking around packing a firearm, that doesn't mean you're not "sharing a responsibility for your own safety." If you live in a democracy, pay taxes and support sensible gun laws (e.g. Massachusetts) you are "sharing in responsibility for your own safety." As imperfect a system as it is, it's better than some jackhole bringing his AR-15 into Starbucks to "protect" himself.
I know fake John Waynes like Roman want to imagine our country should be the Hollywood wild west where everyone is walking around with their gun belts on ready to draw at the first sign of danger, but that on it's face is utterly ridiculous, and if you look at the statistics in states with liberal gun regulations, incredibly more dangerous than what we have in this state. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm
Heck, I saw enough westerns to know that even there people had to give up their guns before they went into town. The answer isn't more guns, but less.
OK, I deleted a comment
No, we don't need photos of women in the Israeli army holding guns. Well, I certainly don't. If you do, you can Google them easily enough.
You deleted a photo of Gal
You deleted a photo of Gal Gadot. Was she overclothed?
No, but completely irrelevant
To this discussion.
Safety first
Can't be too careful with this rising tide of left-wing anti-Semitism. Some young Democratic congresswoman might show up and do a trope, or compare something awful to concentration camps.
A=A
Concentration camps ARE concentration camps. And they pre-date the Holocaust.
Bullshit backtracking.
She said something that was obviously untrue and at best evidence of her historical and moral ignorance.
And there you are trying to word game her out of the hole she dug for herself.
"not a good look" as you people like to say.
Roman is lying.
Use the google, "Roman."
Here's what set off the republican party slime machine:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/aoc-concen...
Where's the "obvious untrue" statement or "historical and moral ignorance?"
I know you're trying to gaslight, "Roman," but you're doing a terrible job.
It seems unfair
To call a facility a concentration camp when those being detained are free to return home -- if they agree to return home. I doubt that agents of the U.S. government are forcing anyone to enter the country against their will, outside criminals in the process of extradition.
Nope
Great story, but once these desperate human beings are here (and most of them LEGALLY applying for asylum by the way), they're being detained by fences and men with guns.
As (I assume) an American citizen, do you want to own this cruelty? I sure as hell don't, it makes me sick. I personally can't understand how some Americans like you can rationalize it, but then I remember what we did to Americans of Japanese descent in WWII out of fear and racism.
Cool, but...
For the Nazi concentration camp analogy to hold, we'd have to imagine Jews voluntarily leaving their home countries for Germany and applying for "asylum" in Germany. And in fact the exact opposite happened. Many Jews could see what was coming (including my family), especially after Kristallnacht, and many tried to flee and either were denied permission to leave or were unable to find countries which would accept them.
FWIW the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 requires the detention of persons seeing asylum at ports of entry. I'll leave it up to the reader to determine who would have signed that legislation.
If you want to argue that conditions in detention aren't adequately humane, I'd go along with that. But I'd chalk up the conditions to be more likely connected to government ineptitude, underfunding, and inability to deal with a surge of applicants more than to some secret plan to exterminate Latinos.
Reading is fundamental
Try it.
Up until last week, if I said
Up until last week, if I said something reminded me of a Concentration Camp and "Never Again". What would you think? I, and most well adjusted people, would think of the horrors of Nazi Germany.
Sure, look up a definition in a dictionary if you really feel the need to make an excuse for AOC but many aren't buying it.
I guess the plus is (if there is one) now we can all talk and compare things to concentration camps - it's all good, right? "Gee, my work is just like a concentration camp"
Another term watered down, just like "racism".
It's not like the ovens just showed up one day
If you can remember the Shoah, then you need to think about what let up to it:, because those death camps didn't just appear out of nowhere: Years of demonization of people who were somehow different from the Herrenfolk (whether Jews, or Gypsies, or the handicapped, or gays), of angry men with torches marching through streets, Kristallnacht, property seizures, media dismissing The Leader's rantings as not really serious, and, yes, rounding up of The Other for rides in boxcars to concentration camps, camps that were set up long before their guards starting dropping Zyklon B pellets down tubes.
If you think "Never Again" means we should only fight when the ashes of gassed people are going up in chmineys, you are too late. "Never Again" needs to start a lot sooner than that. If you're OK with children being round up into concentration camps, made to sleep on concrete under 24-hour lights, deprived of soap and toothpaste - and just ripped from their parents - well, that's your choice, I guess.
Watered Down?
Using the "dictionary definition" of a term is too esoteric for you? Other concentration camps I'm familiar with off the top of my head:
South-West Africa (Now Namibia)
South Africa
Japanese-American camps
Japanese run camps in Manchuria
Navajo /Four Corners
Cambodia
They're all atrocities of varying degrees. The whole point of "Never Again," is that we should never be silent when man-made atrocities of any form occur again in our midst. As a Rabbi recently said in the Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/06/19/never-again-means-noth...
A preventable man-made atrocity is now being perpetrated under our watch, and I applaud AOC for speaking up about it.
P.S. Glibly and fallaciously comparing inhumane detention camps to your work doesn't speak well for you here. Is your work being guarded by men with guns? Do you sleep in a freezer on a concrete floor in your own excrement at work?
More camps!
Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Uighurs
Wow, the solipsism is real
Or maybe it's just ostrich-with-its-head-in-the-sand?
Seriously, just because you don't know about other concentration camps, doesn't mean they didn't exist or that people shouldn't be expected to know about them. Maybe it's time to do some reading about US and world history?
On guns
Everyone has been pretty much begging me to weigh in with my thoughts on guns.
As society stratifies, so should legal gun ownership. Winners such as CEOs, celebs, athletes, politicians, all need the protection of guns. The lower classes in the urban war zones also need guns for protection (and sometimes enforcement, haha, JK, ehh sort of). Those that need them least are probably the vanishing middle classes (read: Deplorables). However, they still obtain them as hobbyists and out of irrational fear. Guns can’t be removed completely, but they should be taken from law abiding gun owners to at least get rid of many of them. If the Deplorables need a gun that badly and are in that much danger, they will elect to acquire them illegally just like the lower classes or anyone else in the rest of the world under real threat. If they don’t, it sort of tells you all you need to know about the perceived threat.
Define "Everyone"
because I haven't seen a single person here "beg you" to opine incoherently on this subject.
“Everyone”
I define “everyone” to only be the Good Posters, not the Bad Posters. Examples of Good Posters are u-hub-fan, cybah, Swirlygrrl, cinnamongrl, Kapil, Old Groucho, Pete Nice, Pete X.... the list goes on...
Bad Posters include BostonDog, Ari O, and boo_urns. I haven’t paid attention to your posts Ron Newman but I will try to get through some (haha) and let you know where you stand.
Wow
I'm honored.
Well thats one way to get gun control passed.
In the past it seemed the only way to have our government take any action on guns is when minorities aquired weapons.
It's a shanda
If you told Bar Mitzvah Boy Bennie in 1997 that his future kids would need a kipah along with kevlar and a Kalashnikov make Torah aliyah, I would have laughed at the absurdity.
Never Forget is never enough.
Any follow-up to antisemitic fires or UMass Vietnam Memorial?
No surprise the rabbi is scared. Perhaps he has been watching breaking news of rampant antisemitism and waiting for the results of the investigations. Me too. Has there been any media follow-up to the highly unusual arson fires targeting Jews in Arlington and Needham (two at the same house)? Today's Globe has a story but they merely ape the word of police that the fires are "under investigation." Why doesn't the Globe conduct their own investigation, the questions are imperative and almost ask themselves. Earlier this month, the City of Taunton had a spate of arsons and police made a quick arrest. No such progress in the antisemitism arsons, despite video and a significant reward.
Likewise, any word on the UMass Vietnam Memorial felony malicious damage (with swastika) that owned the news leading up to Memorial Day but silence since? In a highly unusual move, we were told that an arrest was made but the name wouldn't be released because someone had ordered a mental health evaluation, even though courts were closed on the holiday weekend. That's not how it works but as usual, nothing to see here and no reassessment of the original story. Suspicions only grow when the result of these cases aren't reported as vigorously as they were when "breaking news."
Why don't you come out and say what you're trying to imply?
n/t