May 21, 2025, outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. Yaron Lischinsky, 30 and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26 were brutally murdered. They were soon to be engaged and were employees of the Israeli Embassy in DC. Elias Rodriguez shot them both and they collapsed. Badly wounded, Sarah tried to crawl away. Rodriguez approached and standing over them, fired multiple rounds into their backs, killing them. The probable cause affidavit indicates Rodriquez fired 21 9mm rounds and may have reloaded at least once.
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Rodriguez, a Chicago resident, was well known to Chicago police as a leftist agitator. He is reported to have killed Lischinsky and Milgrim, who he apparently did not know, in support of Hamas, and when taken away by police, yelled “free, free Palestine.”
During my teaching days, in discussions of morality (sparked by the literature we were reading), I told them the tale of Kitty Genovese. In March 13, 1964, in New York City, she was attacked on the street outside her apartment building and stabbed in the back. She screamed for help, and at least one neighbor yelled at the attacker who ran away. Over a half hour, the police were called, but assigned a low priority to the call as the killer returned, raped and robbed her and left again. An ambulance finally arrived, but Genovese died.
Among the parts of the story that persist are indications neighbors asked why they didn’t intervene replied “I didn’t want to get involved.” Whether that’s true is beside the point.
The killer was caught not long afterward in another crime and confessed to killing Genovese. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was later changed to life and he died in prison after a half century.
That both crimes took place in anti-liberty/gun, blue cities is hardly a coincidence. It’s no coincidence there was one present to stop the killers, no one present to intervene to save lives. In both places, most honest citizens are disarmed, and even if they were armed, they’d reasonably believe they’d be likely to be arrested and imprisoned for saving the lives of innocents. This would be even more likely today in NYC. Genovese’s killer was black and was sentenced to death. Today, he might be released on his own recognizance and disappear. The DC killer is apparently a terrorist and/or terrorist supporter. In today’s Democrat political climate, he’s a hero.
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How different was the response of my Texas teenagers, kids whose families own a variety of guns. Many of my students owned their own guns. All respected their power and handled them safely. All agreed that had they been there in NYC in 1964, they would have blown the killer out of his socks as soon as they could lay sights on him. There was no hesitation, no moral dilemma. They knew what was right and their obligation to do right. And while they were all too young to legally carry concealed weapons, they had immediate access to guns and knew how to effectively use them.
But that night in Washington, DC, there were no armed adults anywhere near. There were no police officers. That’s not a surprise, nor is it an attack on the police. There are few of them and fewer in our blue cities after “defund the police” mania which has never entirely abated. Police officers love to catch bad guys in the act, but that’s rare indeed.
Jewish Americans particularly should understand they’re all targets, particularly in blue cities, and while there were apparently armed security guards inside the museum, they had no role in stopping the killer. So, when Rodriquez murdered the couple, apparently only because they were near a Jewish Museum, there was no one present to save them, including themselves.
All it would have taken was one person, one armed and capable person, to stop the attack and potentially, to save the lives of Milgrim and Lischinsky, but that’s not what DC government would want or reward. That’s not what the governments of most of America’s blue cities want. They’re comfortable that people like Milgrim and Lischinsky die rather than allow honest citizens to carry the arms necessary to protect themselves and others because of their failures and criminal coddling.
We now have a federal government that will pick up the prosecutorial pieces if necessary, but federal agents will be even less likely than local cops to be there when seconds count. Normal Americans need to be armed and prepared, particularly Jewish Americans. We’re all facing a divided country, a country with a “resistance” determined to rule us all, a resistance encouraging violence and assassination.
What the murder of Milgrim and Lischinsky teaches is we’re on our own. We always have been, and when we need them, neither cops nor Texas teenagers are likely to be there to save us.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.