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Today, shots rang out at Northern Arizona University and Texas Southern University. Thus far, two students have been reported dead and four others wounded. This is the 282nd day of 2015, and the Northern Arizona shooting was the 299th mass shooting of the year in the United States.
Continue reading “IF WE CAN’T BAN GUNS, CAN WE MAKE THEM SAFER?”
Nearly three years ago, in the days after the mass killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, President Obama went to Newtown, Conn., to speak at a vigil for the victims. He spoke movingly, and seemed to embody the nation’s outrage and its determination to reduce the number of people killed with guns in America. “Do not lose heart,” he told the families of the victims. He said he would use “whatever power this office holds.”
It would have been entirely understandable if Rabbi Joel Mosbacher wanted to ban all guns. Just collect them all, melt them into a lump, and be done with it. Rabbi Mosbacher’s father, Lester Mosbacher, was eulogized as a “gentle soul” in 1992; he died, at 52, after he was shot by a burglar who was holding up his store on Chicago’s South Side.
His murder was the textbook definition of pointless — Mr. Mosbacher was shot in the head and arm by a petty thief who got nothing from the robbery and was tried, convicted, and then released for retrial, which never happened. Nothing ever happened, except that Mr. Mosbacher remained dead.
Continue reading “WORKING FOR SMART GUNS: MAHWAH RABBI FORMS COALITION”
Smart guns have been in development for decades, but the technology still has to overcome extreme skepticism from gun buyers—and law enforcement may be the key.
On May 21, several dozen officers from 10 New York–area law-enforcement agencies converged on the New Rochelle Police Department’s gun range for a small gun show highlighting some of the latest developments in firearms tech. As the officers took turns with a prototype shotgun developed by a scion of the Mossberg gun-making family, the show’s organizer looked on from the back of the range, bemused. Rabbi Joel Mosbacher of Mahwah, New Jersey, is not your typical gun impresario or champion of police firepower: In fact, he ended up putting this event together after years as an anti-gun-violence activist. “I thought I’d be making matches as a rabbi,” Mosbacher said later. “Just not between gun companies and police departments.”
Continue reading “INSIDE A RABBI’S PLAN TO GET COPS TO MAKE SMART GUNS KOSHER”
Even as New York City wrestles with an increase in shootings, Mayor de Blasio is making a habit of missing opportunities to lead on gun safety. Softballs cross the city’s plate, and the mayor doesn’t bother to swing.
Last November, he broke a campaign promise by failing to join 73 mayors and others in pressuring gun manufacturers to make a greater commitment to gun safety.