Pittsburgh to propose tighter gun laws after synagogue attack

FILE PHOTO: Vigil attendees comfort one another outside the Tree of Life synagogue, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 3, 2018. REUTERS/Alan Freed/File Photo

By Gabriella Borter

(Reuters) – The Pittsburgh city council on Tuesday was due to introduce a package of gun-control laws including a ban on assault-style rifles, nearly two months after a gunman shouting anti-Semitic messages killed 11 people in a synagogue.

The measure would also ban certain types of ammunition and allow courts to ban gun ownership by people deemed to pose a significant threat of violence.

FILE PHOTO: Flowers and other items have been left as memorials outside the Tree of Life synagogue following last Saturday's shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 3, 2018. REUTERS/Alan Freed/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: Flowers and other items have been left as memorials outside the Tree of Life synagogue following last Saturday’s shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 3, 2018. REUTERS/Alan Freed/File Photo

“As gun violence escalates across the country, it would be unconscionable for me to stand by and do nothing,” Councilman Corey O’Connor, one of the legislation’s authors, said in a statement. O’Connor represents Squirrel Hill, the neighborhood where the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue took place.

Assault-style weapons, with the capacity to fire multiple rounds in a short period of time, have played a significant role in the series of deadly mass shootings the United States has experienced in recent years.

Gun-rights advocates opposed the measures and threatened legal action if they passed.

The Allegheny County Sportsmen’s League and Firearm Owners Against Crime noted that a state law forbids local governments from enacting stricter gun laws than those in place statewide. The groups also said the proposal would violate the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Robert Bowers, 46, is accused of shooting and killing 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue on Oct. 27, using a legally purchased assault-style rifle and three handguns. He has pleaded not guilty.

 

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter in New York; Editing by Scott Malone and David Gregorio)

Fighting fire with fire: Jewish people train to stop repeat of Pittsburgh shooting

Trainees practice an Israeli shooting method as they take part in the Cherev Gidon Firearms Training Academy in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, U.S. August 5, 2018. REUTERS/Noam Moskowitz

By Gabriella Borter

HONESDALE, Pa. (Reuters) – David Ortner adjusted his yarmulke, cocked his pistol and took aim – something he wishes a civilian had done to defend Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue three days ago when Robert Bowers walked in and shot 11 people dead.

“When this happens, you get a wake-up call,” said Ortner, a 28-year-old owner of an optician shop in Monsey, New York.

Ortner was one of nine Jewish men who attended a one-day course on Tuesday at the privately owned Cherev Gidon Israeli Tactical Defense Academy near Scranton, Pennsylvania, a class that was scheduled on Sunday in response to the Pittsburgh synagogue attack.

He was there to learn how to use a gun to protect himself and his community and prevent a repeat of Saturday’s massacre, the deadliest targeting Jewish people in U.S. history.

“The fact is, we’re at war,” said Yonatan Stern, a veteran officer of the Israel Defense Forces and director of the academy, told his class. “We want every Jew in America armed.”

In the six years since Stern started the academy, demand for firearms training had never been higher than after Saturday’s attack. Hundreds of interested students contacted Stern in the last 72 hours. All but three or four were Jewish.

The spike in demand follows President Donald Trump’s statement that the shooting might have been prevented if the synagogue had employed an armed guard.

But many Jews have resisted the idea that having guns in synagogues is the best way to prevent such attacks.

Rabbi Moti Rieber, executive director of the Kansas Interfaith Action, an advocacy organization, said on Tuesday that he did not believe Trump’s call for more armed guards could prevent attacks on places of worship.

“What kind of country we’re going to be if every house of worship has to have an armed guard?” Rieber said. “I think having less access to that kind of weaponry is going to be much more effective in the long run than having a single armed guard.”

According to Stern, an armed guard at a synagogue is a useful deterrent but not a replacement for armed civilians, since a shooter could kill the armed guard before entering and killing congregants.

“To wait for law enforcement to arrive simply is not the answer,” Stern said.

Some of the students attending the course were card-carrying National Rifle Association members. Some had never fired a gun before. Two worked in schools and wanted to defend Jewish children. Many of them intended to bring guns to their synagogues on the next Sabbath for protection.

“Everybody has to find a way to react; this is my way,” said Zev Guttman, who said he was scared of guns until Saturday’s shooting convinced him he had to be armed.

Tuesday’s course, held in a log cabin on an outdoor shooting range in rural Honesdale, about 300 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, consisted of active-shooter response drills using handguns and rifles. Students practiced drawing concealed weapons, loading and firing AR-15 rifles at bulls-eye targets.

Stern said that it “touches my heart” to see his students in training because he knows they will return to their synagogues as a first line of defense.

(The story corrects the name of Israel’s military in 5th paragraph to “Israel Defense Forces” instead of “Israeli Defense Force”.)

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Frank McGurty and Cynthia Osterman)

Pittsburgh burying three more synagogue shooting victims

A hearse is parked outside the Berg Shalom Synagogue, where a funeral will be held for Joyce Feinberg, one of the victims in Saturday's synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. October 31, 2018. REUTERS/Jessica Resnick-Ault

By Jessica Resnick-Ault and Chriss Swaney

PITTSBURGH (Reuters) – Pittsburgh began holding three more funerals on Wednesday for Jewish victims of a shooting rampage at a synagogue that has become the focus of a fierce political debate about white nationalism and anti-Semitism ahead of hotly contested U.S. congressional elections next week.

Eleven worshipers were gunned down on Saturday morning by a man who stormed into the Tree of Life Synagogue and opened fire, yelling anti-Semitic statements including: “All Jews must die.” It was believed to be the deadliest attack on Jews in the United States in recent history.

Funerals were being held on Wednesday for Melvin Wax, 88, who was leading Sabbath services when the attack began; retired real estate agent Irving Younger, 69; and retired university researcher Joyce Fienberg, 75.

Mourners began showing up hours before Fienberg’s midmorning funeral at the Beth Shalom Synagogue as police blocked off surrounding streets.

The aftermath of the tragedy still pervaded life in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood where the synagogue is located.

In coffee shops, customers talked about the victims they knew. In the street, friends embraced and comforted one another during the period of raw grief.

The synagogue attack has heightened a national debate over Republican U.S. President Donald Trump’s rhetoric, which critics say has contributed to a surge in white-nationalist and neo-Nazi activity. His administration denies he has encouraged far-right extremism and is instead attempting to unify America.

Amid the first funerals for victims on Tuesday, Trump visited Tree of Life.

Thousands protested his presence in the city, accusing him of using rhetoric that has fueled anti-Semitism in America.

Several thousand protesters, an ethnically mixed crowd of all ages, held an anti-Trump rally about a block away from the synagogue just as his visit began, singing Old Testament psalms and carrying signs with such slogans as: “We build bridges not walls.”

Trump made no public comments during his visit but wrote on Twitter on Wednesday morning that his office had been “shown great respect on a very sad and solemn day” in Pittsburgh.

“Small protest was not seen by us, staged far away,” he tweeted. “The Fake News stories were just the opposite-Disgraceful!”

More than 1,800 people paid their respects on Tuesday at Rodef Shalom, another synagogue in Squirrel Hill, the heart of the city’s Jewish community.

Trump’s visit to Pennsylvania’s second largest city came seven days before elections that will determine whether his Republican Party maintains control of both houses of Congress or whether the Democrats seize a majority in one chamber or both.

The accused gunman in the synagogue attack, Robert Bowers, was charged on Monday with 29 federal felony counts including hate crimes.

Four days after the attack, nerves in Squirrel Hill were still frayed. A public school was placed on lockdown following an unsubstantiated report that someone had brought a gun onto campus, police said. The lockdown ended after police found no weapons.

Jodi Smith, a Pittsburgh native, joined mourners ahead of the Wax funeral at the Ralph Schugar Chapel and remembered him as a “very polite, gentle man.”

“I could have claimed him as a father,” Smith said. “He was always at the synagogue, always helping out. The synagogue had been his life since his wife passed away a few years ago.”

Fienberg spent 25 years as a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center until she retired in 2008.

“She was an engaging, elegant, and warm person,” the center said on Facebook.

Younger, whose funeral is being held at Rodef Shalom, was remembered as a doting grandfather.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by John Stonestreet and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Who is Robert Bowers, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting suspect?

SWAT police officers respond after a gunman opened fire at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 27, 2018. REUTERS/John Altdorfer

 

By Jarrett Renshaw

(Reuters) – The suspect in Saturday’s mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue is a 46-year-old local man named Robert Bowers who posted virulent anti-Semitic messages on social media filled with slurs and conspiracy theories.

Two hours before a gunman burst into the Tree of Life synagogue and opened fire during a Shabbat religious service, Bowers posted on chat site Gab.com about the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), a non-profit that helps refugees relocate to the United States.

“HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in,” wrote Bowers, a heavy-set, white male.

The gunman reportedly shouted anti-Semitic phrases during the shooting, which left 11 people dead and five injured, including four police officers.

The suspect, a Pittsburgh resident, was shot and in fair condition at a hospital, authorities said.

Gab.com said in a statement that when it learned of the shooting suspect’s profile on its site, it took “swift and proactive” action to contact law enforcement immediately.

Gab, which promotes itself as a free-speech alternative to the more heavily policed Twitter and has been a popular gathering space for the alt-right, said it backed up the user data and suspended the account, then told the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the data held by the company.

“Gab unequivocally disavows and condemns all acts of terrorism and violence,” the company’s statement said.

Bower has an active firearms license and has made at least six known gun purchases since 1996, a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation told CNN. He did not have a criminal record and was not known to police, law enforcement officials said on Saturday.

An archive of Bower’s Gab posts since he joined the site in January showed an angry, anti-Semitic man who shared messages such as: “Daily Reminder: Diversity means chasing down the last white person.”

About a month ago he posted pictures showing what appeared to the results of his target practice at a shooting range, and a collection of three handguns that he called his “glock family.”

Police said the suspect had three handguns and an assault-style rife at the shooting. It’s unclear whether they were the same handguns as the ones in the photo.

Bowers, who is a registered voter with “no affiliation” in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, took aim in one post at U.S. President Donald Trump, accusing him of being a “globalist” who did nothing to stop the “infestation” of the United States by Jews.

“For the record, I did not vote for him nor have I owned, worn or even touched a MAGA hat,” he wrote. MAGA is an acronym for Make America Great Again that is frequently used by Trump.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw; Additional reporting by Ginger Gibson; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)