According to a 2005 American Jewish Committee (AJC) study, American Jews are among the least likely of all American demographic groups to arm themselves: “Only 13 percent of Jewish households contain firearms (vs. 41 percent for non-Jews),” AJC reported, “and just 10 percent of Jews personally own a gun (vs. 26 percent for non-Jews).” Similarly, according to a 2018 AJC survey of American Jewish opinion, a whopping 70% of American Jews believe that gun control is more important than protecting the rights of gun owners — compared to a mere 25% of Jews who believe the opposite is true.
This is misinformed, historically illiterate nonsense of the highest order, as I explained last month and as a younger, rather well-coiffed Ben Shapiro once explained to then-CNN host Piers Morgan (see video below).
The time has come where American Jews — who, despite an increasingly far-Left, “anti-Zionist,” pro-Islamist, anti-capitalism, anti-religious liberty bent, still overwhelmingly support the Corbyn-ized Democratic Party — simply must arm and defend themselves. Indeed, that time is now long overdue.
Saturday’s fateful shooting at the Chabad of Poway, California came on the last day of Passover and six months to the day after the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. The Tree of Life tragedy was the bloodiest attack on a Jewish institution in American history. The Chabad shooting had all the potential to be just as horrific, were it not for the remarkably brave actions of an armed off-duty U.S. Border Patrol agent — an agent, eerily enough, who was carrying his weapon in shul at the direct request of Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein for a dire situation precisely such as this.
The two synagogue shootings over the last six months have not occurred in a vacuum. Indeed, in many heavily Jewish areas such as Brooklyn, there has been a chronic increase in the rate of anti-Semitic incidents over the past couple of years. Shamefully, the same national “paper of record” that consistently buried Holocaust coverage during World War II and which recently published a vilely anti-Semitic political cartoon straight out of Der Stürmer has also transparently explained that it refuses to properly cover rising anti-Semitism for overtly political reasons. Overall, 2017 FBI hate crime statistics show that Jews — who comprise less than 2% of the total U.S. population — account for an unfathomable 58.1% of all religiously based hate crimes; anti-Muslim hate crimes, which are the second-most frequent variety, account for a relatively paltry 18.6%.
But despite these deeply worrisome trends and eye-gouging statistics, many Jewish institutions in America remain soft targets. True, many shuls and Jewish Community Centers do have armed security — but many do not. And as a pure statistical matter, Jews are less likely to own guns — and to be packing heat while attending religious services — than are our Christian brethren.
Speaking as a proud gun-toting Jew: What on Earth are Jews in this country possibly waiting for? Radio host Tony Katz put it well in October, following the horror in Pittsburgh:
The purpose of being trained and carrying a firearm is to protect yourself and the ones you love. That means children: your children. Why would you ever put yourself in a position not to protect them? Why, as a society, would we ask this of any parent or guardian?
I have stated, with vigor, that any Rabbi that says you should not carry a firearm in a synagogue, or any clergy that says it’s wrong to be armed, is unworthy of leading a congregation. I continued, that houses of worship that state you can not defend yourself are houses of worship that you should not belong to. …
I do not claim that everyone must carry a firearm. I would propose no law to force it upon American citizens. But it is far past time that Jews stop kidding themselves and stop lying to themselves. It is far past time that Jews stop allowing their far-too-often indoctrinated political leanings to cloud their realities.
What Jew now, after the Holocaust, after the fight for modern-day Israel, after the Six Day War, after the Yom Kippur War, after the Achille Lauro, after the terrorist Arafat-inspired and orchestrated Intifada, after the terrorism of Iran, after 9/11, after ISIS, after insert-your-horror here, thinks the problem is US gun laws?
The simple reality is that Jews, who are the most systemically and consistently persecuted group of human beings in the history of the human race, have more reasons to want to train with firearms, become proficient with firearms, own firearms, and carry firearms than do anyone else. Jews, who for millennia have been demographic minorities in every land except for the modern State of Israel itself, ought to be uniquely willing and eager to take advantage of the protections secured by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As the old adage goes, “God created man and Sam Colt made them equal.” Jews who were properly armed instead of forced to live at the behest of gun-grabbing tyrannical oppressors could have better resisted any number of pogroms and atrocities committed throughout history.
While a broader “Jexodus” would be nice, I would at least echo Katz and plead with my fellow Jews: Value your own life above all else (pikuach nefesh) and do not let an irrational fear of firearms stand in the way of your own self-preservation. Become acquainted with firearms. Go train with them. And if you feel comfortable, go purchase a firearm and, ideally, carry one for your own protection. There are some, like Yehuda Remer (the self-anointed “Pew Pew Jew”), who can help guide you along the way.
I part with the sagacious words of this 2003 dissent from a denial to rehear a case en banc from then-Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, a son of Holocaust survivors:
All too many of the other great tragedies of history — Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few — were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.
My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.
Do not be a victim. Arm yourselves, Jews.