THE STOOPID! IT BUUUUURNS!
How else does one stop a machete-wielding villain from chopping up one’s loved ones? Kind words?
Jewish people in the United States have a longstanding aversion to firearms ownership. It’s a ridiculous one, to be sure, since the Torah actually commands Jews to defend their lives with lethal force, if need be. Given Jewish history and the continued anti-Semitic abuses of the Jewish people, it’s hard to believe that so many Jews think that doing nothing and remaining passive victims is the way to stop anti-Semitic attacks.
On the pro-gun side is the famous Talmudic dictum: If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first. This statement from the Talmudic sage Rava is derived from a passage that permits a homeowner to kill an intruder in self-defense if the trespasser arrives in the night.
The Torah commands self-preservation, and Jews who stubbornly refuse to see it while preaching gun control, and claiming that Judaism’s prohibition on putting oneself in unnecessary danger proscribes gun ownership, are blinded by stupidity. How is sitting in one’s own home, celebrating the High Holy Days unnecessarily dangerous – even more so than owning a firearm for self defense?
Rabbi Dovid Bendory has several hypotheses why so many Jewish people refuse to take up arms in their own defense – even when anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise.
1. A desire for utopian moral purity
2. A disproportional incidence of hoplophobia
3. A quest for power through victimization of peers
4. A utopian delusion that if guns would just “go away,”
crime would end and the world would be a peaceful safe place
5. Self hatred and a wish to be helpless, acting out guilt-based
behavioral problems that develop in childhood
6. The Ostrich Syndrome
7. Garden-variety hypocrisy
8. Adulterated religion — Jews In Name Only (JINOs)
9. Feel-good sophistry
10. Abject fear that yields irrational behavior
Here's what happens when people rise to defend themselves.
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