Q: What does Rabbi Miller feel about having a gun at home? If not that, what can we have for security?
A: Where there are children in the house it is impossible to have a gun. Where there are no children, it could be.
Now, whether it is legal or not, that is something you have to check, I cannot tell you. It could be it’s possible to have a gun but it’s very important to know that little children will sometimes discover things that you concealed. When I was a little boy I found a gun; my father’s gun. My father had a grocery store and he had a gun under the cash register. I took the gun out in the backyard and I experimented with it. I took a bullet and I put it between the planks of a fence, and then I took a nail and I put it against the cartridge at the back and I banged with a hammer. It exploded back into my face – I was bleeding all over. And so, with little children it is out of the question.
What else can you do? Many things. One thing is, never leave your door open. Even if your children are playing outside don’t leave the door open; they have to knock on the door to come back again. Doors must be closed always. That is a very important point.
And of course don’t answer the door with a remote control bell and let somebody come into your vestibule unless you know who is there. I know a case of a woman in Boro Park, she lost her life; she pressed the button in reply to the bell and an Italian boy came up and killed her. So don’t answer unless you know who is there. Very important! You have to look through the door and see who is there. So keeping your door closed and porch doors closed – even if you have a porch on the second floor – is very important.
Keeping your windows closed is very important. And it’s easy to secure windows. Bore a hole and put a nail in. It’s very easy to open when you need it but from the outside it can’t be opened.
There are other simple forms of self-precaution that people can practice. I am sure there are better experts than I am. It’s a big mitzvah to secure your home and many times a person can save lives by very simple precautions.
By the way, while we are talking about safety, there is a big tzadik who is spreading information about safety in the home; he is right here in our shul. And it is very important information not only against criminals coming into your home, but also against accidents. It’s very important to study that.
What’s the point of publishing something written decades ago? Much has changed, including home safety, and gun safes that weren’t as easily purchased etc. Who does this article serve?
This advice is very outdated with modern safes that can be opened only by who the gun owner allows.
To the commentors that today is different: Rabbi Miller was not talking to you. He was talking to those that wish to listen to daas torah. You seem to have already decided on our own that today is different. Clearly you consider yourself the sole authorities on what a Torah jew should or should not do. So have yourself and good long life on this world and keep worrying about defending yourself – but do be careful to do teshuva at some point so you can also have a good life in the next world – typically reserved for those who listen to Torah authorities.
Bshtei,
If his argument was based on Torah I would agree. But it wasn’t. Its based entirely on the safety issue of children and access to guns.
With today’s electronic safes that can’t be opened by someone without permission, there’s no reason to believe his argument is still in affect.
You do not understand what daas Torah is.
Daas Torah means any daas from a talmid chachom, because since he is steeped in Torah, what he says is going to be the Torah way.
That being said, a person should ask contemporary daas Torah about this very serious inyan, because the Torah applies differently in different situations, and these times are very different than the times of Rav Avigdor Miller.
I think the way the answer is given shows that the question did not include the possibility of securing a firearm where children cannot get to it. It is very obvious that his answer is predicated on the assumption that children could gain access to the weapon. It is not unreasonable to draw an inference (ie: diyyuk) that Rabbi Miller would answer that differently, but we don’t actually know.
Many times, Daas Torah has to be carefully “read” or “heard” as to what it answers and what it doesn’t answer. I don’t think Rabbi Miller addressed the question of secured firearms, so I wouldn’t say his response tells us what he would say if you added that to the question.
As well, one has to consider that the entire social fabric of the United States is presently decaying, making it ever more dangerous for Jews. For example, we now have vociferous anti-Semites spreading Jew-hatred from the chambers of the U.S. Congress; college campuses are cesspools of hatred for Israel and Jews; BLM and Antifa thugs, allied with radical Muslims and backed by the democrat party, take to the streets to pillage and burn like modern day cossacks; incidents of violent anti-Semitism are increasing at an alarming rate. Bottom line: Rabbi Miller was NOT writing at a time when all of these dangers have come upon us. Only cowed and naive Jews will fail to see that the need for self-defense is now an imperative, R”L.