13 Comments

• Milhouse

  First of all, Broyde has been discredited, exposed as a fraud, and should not be respected as an authority on anything.

  That said, I listened to about the first 20 minutes, and was far from impressed. Right from the beginning he makes it obvious that his underlying premise is that my arming myself for my defense poses a net danger to other people, and the only question is whether I have the right to do so anyway.

  But that’s a ridiculous premise, contrary to the well-established facts. In principle, having armed people ready to defend themselves should reduce crime, not increase it. The more guns, the less crime. In practise this effect seems to be small, perhaps too small to be reliably measured. We do know that weapons appear to be used to prevent violent crime more often than they’re used to commit them. But what’s undisputed is that better access to guns does not increase crime. Either it reduces it or it has no effect, but it definitely doesn’t increase it. So the whole basis of Broyde’s lecture is false.

  Also, in the part I heard he says that since I may not deliberately shoot an innocent person to save my life, I may also not shoot at someone who is attacking me if there’s a risk that I’ll miss him and shoot an innocent bystander. This does not logically follow. It’s a cheap trick, an intellectual sleight of hand. There is a world of difference between the two cases.

  He mentions the case of the water. What he doesn’t mention in the part I heard was that if the water belongs to one person, the other person may not steal it from him.. Here, the other person is the one who has bought a gun to protect himself. You are the one who wants to take away his gun, because you claim his having a gun somehow makes you less safe. That is like wanting to take away his water because you need it to survive. It’s his water, and he is entitled to drink it and survive, even if you die. Similiarly it’s his gun, and he is entitled to use it to defend himself and survive, even if the result, somehow (how?), is that you die.

  If you’re concerned about his shooting skills, pay for him to have lessons! But experience shows that private CCW holders are better trained than most policemen, so better concentrate on improving police training.

  • The water

    It sounded like he was saying that you denying him your water would lead to his death and attempting to find a connection between that and you having a gun, which would lead to his death. But it makes no sense, first because by the water the other person has done nothing to you so you aren’t trying to protect yourself from him attacking you but only to protect yourself from dehydration. And second because you having a gun is not a psik reisha that it leads automatically to his death the way him not having water does!

• His ideas are illogical

  I forced myself to listen to half an hour of this and so far the Rabbi’s whole argument is based on the fact that it is prohibited to kill an innocent person (not a guilty person) in self-defense. And that because sometimes in a society where people have guns innocent people get shot (for example by suicide) therefore we should have gun control. But what happens when there is gun control?
  1. Innocent people get shot anyway, only in greater numbers because criminals know they are helpless. This has been proven by how many shootings there are in places where to carry a gun is illegal, like schools and shopping malls.
  2. A criminal does not care if he has to break the law to acquire a gun. So he will have the gun and the innocent person will not be able to defend himself.
  3. The various scenarios he presents of how it will come to be that an innocent person gets shot only prove that he knows nothing about guns. You think a person is threatening you so you shoot him but he really wasn’t? Gun owners are not the trigger-happy idiots they are made out to be, but even an idiot can tell when he is actually being threatened. You shoot the person threatening you but you miss? Most gun owners practice their aim and many even take extensive training in order to use their gun safely. A person broke into your house so you shot him and later found out he didn’t want to kill you but only to steal? So you are expected to go downstairs to greet him as he is breaking in and say “excuse me, but please tell me if you are coming to kill me or not?”
  4. Everyone who lives in Crown Heights and is terrorized by the almost constant violence sees the effects of gun control and how it empowers criminals and endangers the innocent.

  Finally, by no means it is the case that every posek agrees with Rabbi Broyde that the gemora provides justification for gun control. Therefore it is by no means obvious that the conclusions he is attempting to draw from the gemora are the correct ones. He is a very liberal Rabbi and I am surprised that CH.info is davka bringing him to tell Lubavitchers what they should think about this.

  • Anonymous

    Re your point 3, it could use some elaboration.

    Let’s suppose that someone mistakenly thinks someone else is threatening him, and shoots in self-defense, and then it turns out that he wasn’t really threatening him after all. This does happen. Of course it happens. It doesn’t happen every day, but it does happen once in a while — usually to cops, or to soldiers in war (look up how many people are killed by friendly fire). And it’s sad when such a mistake is made, and costs an innocent person his life. But neither the Torah nor the law were given to the ministering angels. A person can only act on the information available to him. If you honestly and reasonably believe someone to be an imminent threat to your safety, then you have every right to shoot him, and even if you turned out to be mistaken you have done nothing wrong. It may not be the victim’s fault that you made a mistake, but it’s not your fault either. That is what the Torah says, and that is what the common law says. We must take every reasonable measure to ensure that our threat assessment skills are sound, and then we must rely on them, and if they fail they fail. This is not a valid objection at all.

    The same is true about the possibility of missing ones target. Of course one should take precautions against this happening — practise at the range, and carry soft-point bullets so they won’t ch”v hit someone who is behind your target. And be very wary of shooting when you don’t have a clear shot at your target. But if after taking every reasonable precaution you do hit someone by accident, that’s legitimate “collateral damage” and it is neither a sin nor a crime.

    As for the case of a burglar who turns out not to have intended to kill you? So what? The Torah explicitly says that a burglar should be assumed to be a threat to your life, unless you are 100% sure othewise. And the law in many places allows you to kill a robber or burglar even if you know for sure that he’s not a killer, just to prevent him from stealing. In the case of a ben noach, it’s very likely that the Torah agrees. Lechol hade’os each dead robber means a better world. So what’s the problem?

• Citizens for guns...But

  Of course, in general, a gun is good for self defense.
  BUT! When someone told the Bobover Rebbe zt”l about the JDL slogan (which was posted in public) “every jew a .22”, the rebbe ztl said “every jew a 26!”.
  (Hashem’s name is gimatria 26.)
  A yid can accomplish much more with Torah and Mitzvot.

• Yankel

  This so called rabbi is a complete fraud. He has paskened that women need not cover their hair. His torah opinions are of zero value.

• Milhouse

  And, right on time, here comes an example of someone who is very happy he had an AR-15 under the bed. Anyone who would have prevented him from doing so, would have his blood on their hands. Or at least his burgled house.

  • Milhouse

    The stylesheet on this site doesn’t make links distinct, so I should point out that “here” in my previous comment is a link to the news story.

• Broyde is a fraud

  Even before that became known, no true Talmud chochom saw anything in him. I don’t understand why Lubavitch who have their own true talmidei Chachomim who are also speak a good English, like rabbi Chaim rapport, rabbi feitel levin, rabbi gershon steinmetz etc. need to bring frauds like broyde
  Needless to say there is nothing wrong with having a true talmidei Chachom who is not Lubavitch speak, it’s just funny how we don’t even use our own

• Chaim

  His statement about guns not helping in the holocaust is absurd. First of all, there are many instances where militias beat powerful armies. For example when the Afghani Mujahideen fighters beat the soviet army. Also, say if the Jews were armed with firearms in 1939-1945, perhaps they would die, however the death of a firefight is a million times more preferable to a death in the camps. Does this Rabbi claim that being slaughtered like sheep was the preferable way for European Jewry to die? This Rabbi should know better than saying such an absurd thing. It’s insulting too.

• You should watch how you speak

  To anyone calling the Rav a fraud: the rabbi admitted and apologized for some misdeeds previously. None of these misdeeds involved anything having to do with his scholarship. None of the Rabbi’s scholarly articles/piskei halacha were ever shown to be incorrect, plagiarized or anything else. Regardless of how he looks, he knows more Torah in his sleep than anyone reading this article. He is still very well respected in the legal and the halachic world. Remember, just because we have beards and mangy black hats doesn’t mean you know near as much as someone who looks different than you. Shame on you all. Rabbi Broyde has done his tshuvah, maybe you should all start doing yours.

  • Milhouse

    His fraud may not have to do with his scholarship, but it does have to do with his honesty, including intellectual honesty. And here we have an example where he weaves together a thoroughly dishonest argument to reach his desired conclusion.

• #11

  He does not.