Why Are American Jews So Anti-Gun?

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 2008-03-22 06:32.

Eric King at The Jewish Daily Forward - Mr. King thinks that American Jews, unlike their Israeli counterparts, are still suffering from what he calls the "shtetl mentality." Maybe he's right. Amazing what hogwash you can teach a whole culture. [tmm]

Quote:
With the Supreme Court opening this week the first extensive examination of the constitutional right to bear arms in nearly 70 years, now seems a pretty good time to ask a question that’s been perplexing me for nearly as long: Why is that American Jews are so overwhelmingly anti-gun?

I’ve been stumped by this communal aversion to firearms ever since I was a 6 year old, back in 1947. While flipping through old Life magazines one day in my grandparents’ living room in the Bronx, I came across photographs taken at the liberation of concentration camps. I saw the pictures of bodies stacked like cordwood, and was stunned.

“Mommy, why are all those people dead?” I asked.

My mother, a brilliant and subtle woman, thought for a moment and said, “The bad Germans called Nazis killed them.” To which, of course, I asked, “Why did the Nazis kill them?”

“They killed them because they were Jews,” she replied.

Although I was only 6 and not yet sure of my identity or its meaning, I asked, “We’re Jews, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” answered my mother.

“Mommy,” I asked, without missing a beat, “do you and Daddy have a gun so we can protect ourselves if the Nazis come for us?”

“This is America,” my mother reassured me. “That can’t happen here.”

...

Israelis, in short, have learned a lesson that far too few American Jews have yet to grasp: For Jews, the phrase “assault rifle” is a misnomer — the correct term, once the shtetl mentality has been transcended, is “Jewish defense rifle.”

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( categories: RKBA )
I support freedom, including
Submitted by Scott Hughes (not verified) on Sat, 2008-03-22 14:18.

I support freedom, including the right of people to own guns. But I doubt that civilian gun ownership would stop a holocaust.

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I think it would. Anywhere
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 2008-03-22 16:13.

I think it would. Anywhere there's been genocide the people were disarmed first. There are many accounts of successful armed resistance. The Warsaw ghetto uprising was successful on many levels. The resistance in Afghanistan and Iraq seems to be a problem for the imperial troops.

Read Van Creveld or James S. Lind.

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