NYS Senator Simcha Felder gave YWN the following statement on Thursday morning, the day after 17 people were shot in the Florida school massacre:
“I am sickened as I write these words, but how long can we stay silent? We wait for emotion to die down, for public attention to focus elsewhere, and then we wait for the next horrible, unspeakable tragedy… children and teachers massacred at school.
Yesterday’s tragedy, the 40th since 2000, highlights once again why we need to take a cold, hard look at my 2 bills, languishing in Albany, that would safeguard our schools and protect our children.
One (S6798) requires the entrance of every school be manned by a trained, armed police officer. The second (S6272) requires all schools to include emergency response drills for all situations including active shooters or other lethal attacks.
We have suffered the worst tragedy imaginable and our thoughts and prayers are with the victims. However, I am calling on all of us to make necessary changes in school security and student/personnel training with immediacy.
Our hearts are in the right place, but without taking decisive action we are failing -and the price of failure is unthinkable.”
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
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2 Responses
Simcha:
Come now. You want to discriminate against those who leave school and retain anger towards the perpetrators of their school experience? These people, who have their mental health issues, have the same rights as you and me, and should be eligible to purchase and use firearms. What’s a few tragedies once in a while. Everyone will eventually die anyway. These folks are as entitled to take innocent lives as the funded terrorists are.
OK. Now, without the sarcasm. You introduced some bills in the State Senate. As your constituents, we support you all the way. You know that. You have resistance from other districts and their representatives. You need to focus on them and get them to understand that the current situation allows such atrocities to happen anywhere, including their own districts.
Do the armed guards at every school need to be police? What about security guards? Can’t they be armed? Or are the extremists about gun laws insisting that only regular police can be armed? Like with many things, there is a political angle. When we place that above common sense, we always lose.
I wish you hatzlochoh in bringing your two proposed bills to passage into law.
In a biography of Rabbi Shach, he described Germany as the greatest nation in science, medicine, philosophy and physics—and “look what they did”–a referral to the Holocaust. R. Shach also was against introducing secular subjects in cheders, Yeshivas, etc.
There is a secularist movement in the USA and elsewhere to eliminate religion, to minimize religious beliefs. I’m not a prophet nor am I very religious but to destroy, to denigrate the basic belief that there is no G_d and that there is no final judgement on mankind for the good and evil he/she does, leads to tragedies of unspeakable horror and chaos.
May I suggest ALL Jews do more Talmud Torah, more davvening and more Chesed. Doing so will benefit you, your family, Israel, and Olam. (I’ve been repeatedly assure by a great Rabbi in Lakewod, N.J. that I can suggest these things to Jews, though I am a low character goy.)
A goy, Gerry Mullen