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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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