Guns ‘n’ Moses: Why more Jews are packing heat
A Jewish suburban mom, a doctor and a cop walk into a shooting range.
That’s no setup to a punch line; it’s who you might find at the kind of New Jersey gun range where I took a basic pistol class last Sunday morning.
As our instructor looked around at the class and commented on the strange mix of individuals, he noted that just one character was missing from his typical crew of students: a rabbi.
He didn’t have to explain why; you only need to watch the news to know that synagogues, kosher supermarkets and Jewish community centers are a renewed target for violence right here in the New York area, not to mention Paris and Jerusalem.
That’s not the (only) reason I was there. I’m no longer the card-carrying liberal I was in my teens and early 20s, but even then my relationship with guns was more complicated.
As a child, I was saved by the presence of a gun in my home. A man tried to climb in my bedroom window one night. My single mother heard the noise, grabbed her gun and explained (though no explanation was really necessary) that it would be in the man’s best interest to return from whence he came.
I’ve always appreciated my mom’s gun possession ever since. But now, as a mother myself, I understand it, too.
Recently Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson came under fire (sorry, couldn’t resist) for saying the Holocaust might not have unfolded the way it had if Jews in Europe had been armed.
Many Jewish groups and individuals were up in arms (last one, I promise) over those comments, and understandably so: Carson’s claim that the Nazi mass murder of Jews “would have been greatly diminished” if the Jews of Germany hadn’t been disarmed doesn’t stand up to historical scrutiny.
Yet Carson was learning the right lesson. More than any other group in America, it’s Jews who should not only support the Second Amendment in theory but also avail ourselves of those rights.
The Second Amendment was designed, at least in part, as a bulwark against the rise of a tyrannical government. In America — and nowhere else in the world — Jews finally, after thousands of years of persecution, have this inalienable right.
Even in Israel the right to bear arms doesn’t come easily. As Israeli gun owner Yael Shahar recently explained in a Facebook post: “Applying for a license is a grueling process, often taking months of security checks and training courses. Keeping that license requires an investment of time, effort, and money.”
Sadly, recent events have proven once again why many Israelis think it’s a good investment. Tuesday brought three more deaths in the daily barrage of Palestinian terrorism in Israel, especially Jerusalem. The streets are emptier than usual and stores are selling out of self-defense items like pepper spray and Swiss Army knives.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat told residents recently, “Given the current escalation of violence in the security situation, those with a licensed firearm who know what to do with it must go out with their weapon. In a way, it’s like military reserve duty.”
Unfortunately for Jerusalemites not now serving in the military, a firearm is a resource few have access to.
American Jewish groups — which generally fall on the liberal side of the aisle — may be coming out in force against American gun laws they have declared to be too lax (usually without understanding the details).
But even in blue states like New York and New Jersey, rabbis and Jewish laypeople are quietly applying for gun and concealed-carry permits.
On a bathroom break during my Sunday class, I noticed a man in a yarmulke teaching an advanced course on self-defense in another room, and another man walking around in a Confederate flag hat. Friends who frequent the range say they’re seeing more yarmulkes and fewer “rebels” these days.
Bethany Mandel, a stay-at-home mom, writes on politics and culture.
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