Jews And Guns
By ROBERT J. AVRECH
Before my son Ariel, zl, passed away a year and a half ago, he and I spent a great deal of time discussing the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms. Ariel was always amazed at how many Jews shomer Shabbos Jews aligned themselves with the advocates of gun control, in reality a movement to banish the private ownership of guns by lawful citizens.
During the Los Angeles riots of 1992, my wife Karen and I, along with Ariel and our daughter Leda, were inside a film theater. Abruptly, an angry mob congregated outside; soon they were trying to break down the doors. Trapped inside, we were all terrified. I held Leda in my arms; she shivered like a frightened rabbit. Karen held Ariel`s hand.
"Don`t worry," I said with false confidence, "the police will be here soon."
But the police did not arrive that night, nor did they protect the city from arson and widespread looting. In fact, we watched in disbelief as news cameras captured images of police officers standing idly by while looters gleefully committed their crimes.
A few days later, I bought a gun.
I bought a gun because I realized that the day might come again when the people who were sworn to protect us would once again choose not to.
As Ariel`s conservative political opinions began to cohere, he logically fell on the side of legal gun ownership. But because he was first and foremost a Torah Jew, first and foremost a Talmudic scholar, Ariel sat down and put gun ownership into a halachic framework. We often talked about his ideas. Ariel wanted to put them down on paper. Unfortunately, he never had the opportunity to write the article on halacha and gun ownership that he wanted to author. And so I humbly jot down a few of Ariel`s ideas. Any mistakes in this article are mine and mine alone. I write from an imperfect memory, from conversations with my beloved son held years ago, and from the few notes he scribbled.
Ariel pointed out that in his commentary on Bereishis 4:23, Ramban says: "The sword is not the cause of murder, and there is no sin upon him who made it." In other words, a weapon, be it a sword or a gun, is neutral. It can be used for good or for evil. Thus to label a gun as "bad" makes no sense, for a gun can be used in self-defense, which the Torah sees as a primary right.
The Torah (Exodus 22:2) teaches that, when necessary a householder may kill a burglar to save his own life. Gemara Sanhedrin (72A) says: "He who rises to kill you, you must kill first." It seems odd to have to defend the most basic notion of self-defense, but in America today, the shrill and self-righteous voices of pacifism and appeasement have become alarmingly prominent.
Ariel told me that if gun control advocates had their way, the only people with access to guns would be the police, who cannot be counted on for security, and criminals, who can be counted on to be, well, criminals, and to have absolutely no respect for the hundreds of gun laws already on the books.
Ariel also pointed out that on Purim the Jews were given royal permission to defend their lives. The king`s edict did not order the army to protect the Jews, no; the Jews were allowed to purchase arms in order to defend themselves. Obviously, as a minority in the Persian Empire, Jews were forbidden weapon ownership. This is not unique in Jewish history. During the Roman occupation of Judea, Jews were forbidden to own swords, spears or any implements of war. What better way for a ruling empire to control an unruly and rebellious population? And of course, in Europe, one of the first laws that Hitler imposed was an all-encompassing weapons ban. Imagine how different Jewish history would be if every Jewish family in Europe owned at least one gun that had six bullets in the chamber.
One of the hallmarks of modern liberalism, Ariel suggested, is an astonishing inability to recognize, much less confront, evil. Therefore it becomes psychologically necessary for the liberal to place the blame on an inanimate object the gun rather than on the person who pulls the trigger. It is easier to fault the gun manufacturer for the horror at Columbine, rather than admit that two 16-year-old boys are capable of such evil.
The Jewish attitude, Ariel maintained, is to place the blame where it squarely belongs: on the two young men; to declare their evil, and never to utter their names. For just as goodness is a reality, so is evil. Try and imagine, said Ariel, if one or two Columbine teachers had guns with them. Imagine if these armed teachers had been able to protect the students who were shot down like defenseless animals.
There was another aspect to these stories that Ariel detected and deeply troubled him. The media always referred to Columbine and even 9-11 as "tragedies." "They`re not tragedies," Ariel held. "They are outrages." A tragedy is when people are killed in a fire or an earthquake. But when people are murdered in cold blood, it is an atrocity. Again, Ariel pointed out, the media, overwhelmingly liberal, is unable to distinguish malevolent acts from natural disasters.
Ariel concluded that Jews in America should be at the forefront of the right to bear arms. Jews should join the National Rifle Association. For Jews to rely on the power of the state for protection is sheer foolishness. Time and again, Jewish history reveals governments cruelly betraying their Jewish citizens. And though Ariel felt that America was different, he still maintained that allowing the state to make the ownership of weapons illegal is an unwise policy.
But like so much else in American Jewish life, Jews have signed on to aggressively utopian ideologies that go against their self-interest. Instead, countless Jews espouse principles that feed their need to feel virtuous. But in the end, these are beliefs that defy common sense and display an appalling ignorance of Jewish history and halacha.
Ariel looked forward to the day when he and I would go to the shooting range together for some target practice.
"Let`s shoot at a picture of Arafat," I said.
"And Osama," said Ariel.
"And Saddam Hussein."
"And the president of France," Ariel added with his wry smile. ◙
Robert J. Avrech is a screenwriter and producer in Hollywood, best known in the Jewish world for A Stranger Among Us. His novel, The Hebrew Kid and the Apache Maiden, can be found at Jewish bookstores. He can be contacted at his website, seraphicpress.com .
