Is It Time For Jews To Arm In America?
By
Leonard Zwelling
As readers of this blog know, I am a staunch advocate of gun control legislation. I do not want to ban guns, but everyone who wants one ought to have a license to carry that requires training and the passing of written and shooting tests. I am far less concerned with long guns used for hunting. I am concerned about semi-automatic weapons and urge the banning of any conversion kits that render these fully automatic. I have no idea why any citizen needs one of these assault-style weapons, anyway. You don’t hunt with an AK-47. It is a weapon of war and unless you are planning on an armed insurrection, you don’t need one of these.
My focus has largely been on hand guns. These are the weapons of choice in cases of suicide, domestic violence, and common street crime. They are also often used in school shootings. These are the weapons that people should be licensed to own. Also, no bullets should be allowed to be sold on the internet. Background checks on all sales, even at gun shows are a must. Mandatory gunlocks and gun safes in homes should be, too. We can do better with hand gun violence in the United States than we have done so far.
Now, I do know Jewish people who own handguns. I never knew any growing up in New York, but in other parts of the country, where handgun ownership is a way of life, even the Jews own guns. I am beginning to wonder if more of us need to join the ranks of Jewish gun owners as a matter of protection, for it is clear that we are under attack.
The violence about which I have already written in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, and certainly in Boulder, might have been reduced by a Jew with a hand gun. This has always been anathema to me. From the first moment I fired a handgun, through my training at a gun range, to my acquisition of my license to carry when you needed one in Texas, I was horrified by the power of firearms. After all that preparation, I never wound up buying a gun. I am thinking about buying one now and of carrying it with me. I no longer believe that I am safe from violent antisemites and fear that the tolerance extended to Jews by the Trump White House and its MAGA allies, especially to those Jews on Ivy League campuses, is a short-term reprieve that will blow up as surely as did DEI among this crowd. We may be darlings now, but we never were before and I doubt this tolerance of Jews will last. Besides, I am not at all sure that the Trump Administration’s new-found war against anti-Semitism in the Ivy League is more about anti-Semitism or the Trump grudge against the Ivy League. I do not think the Trump advocacy for Jews is genuine nor durable, especially among the crowd that stormed Washington on January 6, 2021. I didn’t see a yarmulke nor Star of David on Capitol Hill that day.
I have to continue to think on this. Do I really want a gun in my house? No, I don’t. But I might want one on my hip when I drive around Houston. And, that, my friends, is a sad commentary, indeed.
Anti-Semitism is on the rise and it is expressing itself more violently. But what is more concerning is that it is becoming acceptable under the guise of Palestinian liberation and anti-Zionism. But we should not delude ourselves. We Jews are under attack once again. We may well need to train like our brethren in Israel.
This time, we will be ready.
