Jews and Guns: Time for a Reckoning?

In December of last year, I did something almost unheard of for a Jewish organization: I took my 12-person staff of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values (now the North American Values Institute) to a shooting range during our offsite retreat. After a brief lesson in gun safety, we took turns firing at silhouette targets. A few had handled firearms before, but most had never so much as touched one. Participation was optional, and only one opted out. As I scanned the firing lanes, I tried to imagine any of the mainstream Jewish organizations I’ve worked for or alongside over the past three decades doing the same. I couldn’t. It felt transgressive—almost mischievous—but also clarifying.

Most American Jews I know have a visceral aversion to guns. They regard the idea of a firearm in the home the way one treats a smoldering fire in the attic—something dangerous and in urgent need of removal. Nothing captures this prevailing sentiment better than Al Franken’s famously caustic humor in his 1996 bestseller “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot”:

“Phil Graham (former Republican Texas Senator) said something interesting to the NRA convention. He said, ‘I own more shotguns than I need. But less shotguns than I want.’ When I heard that I thought to myself, ‘Wow, he and I are really different people’ … See, I’ve never owned a gun. I won’t allow one in the house … guns kept in the home are 43 times more likely to kill a family member than an assailant … Grandpa is twenty times more likely to be shot by your seven-year-old nephew than by a drug addict trying to steal your VCR. The number goes up to 36 if Grandpa is barbequing in your backyard.”

But as antisemitism rises and threats to Jewish safety grow, can we really afford to cling to that hostility—or the smugness that comes with it? Should more Jews be willing to learn how to use, and perhaps even own, firearms? Is it time to end the taboo?

Perhaps it’s time to make amends not only with guns, but also with the millions of our fellow Americans who carry them. Perhaps more Jewish organizations should do what my organization did and take their staff to the gun range. I’m not suggesting anyone join the NRA—I certainly haven’t—but it’s long past time for self-reflection and an attitude adjustment.

I grew up with a different relationship to guns than most American Jews—without the hangups or fear so common in our community. When I was young, my father was robbed at gunpoint at his place of business. Not long after, I began noticing a zipped leather pouch in his open briefcase, its bulge unmistakably shaped like a .38 revolver. Later, he kept one under the front seat of his car and a shotgun in the bedroom closet. When my own kids were small, we always made sure during visits that he locked everything away.

The first time I handled a gun was at age ten in the YMCA’s Indian Guides program. The intention was to foster father-son bonding (it’s since renamed Adventure Guides and includes girls). They took us to a shooting range, handed us .22 caliber rifles, and gave a brief safety lesson. My first shot missed the target entirely and punched a neat hole through the resting mat barely three feet from where I lay.

At age 20, I signed up for a three-month basic training program with the Israel Defense Forces for young Jews considering making aliyah. Each of us was issued an M-16 and taught to use it. We even slept with our weapons strapped around our shoulders in our sleeping bags. “Hold on to it like your girlfriend,” our drill sergeant barked. It was there that I first learned about Tohar HaNeshek—the “purity of arms”—the IDF’s ethical code holding that weapons must be used only for legitimate military objectives, never for revenge or cruelty. My experience with the IDF instilled in me the sense that a gun is not just a dangerous weapon, but also a responsibility that carries great moral weight. Unlike my father, however, who has always kept a gun nearby, I have never owned one.

In the spring of 2018, I received an unexpected call from the principal of my son’s private school. My 14-year-old son had appeared in a photo taken outside of school by another boy who was holding a gun—not a real one, but a disabled airsoft pistol that fired plastic pellets. The toy was pointed at my son’s head. There was no commentary whatsoever. Still, the principal declared, “This is very, very serious,” and informed me that my son would be suspended for the rest of the school year—more than three weeks—and barred from graduating with his middle school class.

Just months earlier, a 19‑year‑old gunman murdered 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and school administrators were on high alert. But the reaction of the principal struck me as draconian. My son had not threatened anyone. Yet he was punished as if he had. Across the country, similar overreactions played out: a boy suspended for biting a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun, another for pretending his pencil was a gun. These incidents blurred the line between safety and hysteria. Administrators seemed incapable of distinguishing between an Uzi and a pastry. I wrote about the incident in a widely read piece for The Washington Post, but within the Jewish community, I found little sympathy. A few even told me they sided with the school.

Modest Gun Control

Even as I grew more skeptical of the reflexive revulsion toward guns, I continued, and still continue, to support moderate gun control. On a trip to the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania with friends, we stopped into a large sporting goods store going out of business. One friend, whose teenage son loved to shoot, spotted an AR-15–style assault rifle on clearance. Within 45 minutes, the paperwork was done and he walked out with the weapon. He shook his head and muttered, “It shouldn’t be that easy.” I couldn’t disagree.

Like most Americans, I support universal background checks, mental health screening as part of the permitting process, and stronger reporting requirements for individuals deemed a danger to themselves or others. I support “Red Flag Laws” that allow courts to temporarily remove firearms from high-risk individuals. But I no longer believe an assault weapons ban is either feasible or wise in America today.

Calls for sweeping reforms often follow mass shootings, with renewed demands to ban assault weapons. After each horrific mass shooting, the voices rise in unison: This time we must succeed in getting these weapons off the street! For a fleeting moment, the goal seems within reach. But as the political machinery grinds into motion, opposition stiffens, bills stall, and the sense of urgency evaporates.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans see guns, including assault rifles, not as a vice but as a way of life. The NRA, often caricatured as an alien force, is in reality an expression of this widespread gun culture.

Most Jews live in or near urban centers, where crowded life requires strict regulation governing our interactions. In those environments, an assault weapon seems wildly out of place. But millions of other Americans live in wide-open spaces with immense freedom of movement. While your father or grandfather may have walked to school through the boroughs of New York City, someone else’s father or grandfather rode the school bus with a rifle propped beside him, headed for the after-school 4-H shooting club. In those parts, they hunt, fish and ride their ATVs across unpaved trails. They take their assault weapons to the gun range, shoot them on their own properties and even use them to hunt.

My wife and I are building a home along a mountain stream in West Virginia, and nearly everyone we’ve met—from our builder to our draftsman—has offered to take us shooting. One even has his own range on his massive property. These men are not violent extremists. They are guardians, shaped by traditions of hunting, fishing, and land stewardship. Their outlook is foreign to most American Jews, but it is part of the nation we share.

One of our contractors, Trent, grew up in Grafton, West Virginia, population 4,700. “Schools were closed at the start of the antlered deer season every November,” he told us. To this day, many school districts across the country—from the Deep South to parts of the rural Midwest—still close for several days so that parents, teachers and kids can set out for big game, which they frequently eat and put away as food for the rest of the season.

Aggressive reform campaigns risk alienating these Americans and undermining the prospects for moderate measures. Even if an assault weapons ban passed, it would leave untouched the 20–24 million such rifles already in circulation. Practical reform requires acknowledging reality: Guns are a permanent part of American life.

A New Jewish Self-Defense Ethos

Many Jews, it turns out, have not only made peace with gun culture—they’ve embraced it. An Orthodox friend told me that in his congregation, a surprising number of men now carry concealed weapons to shul. It shouldn’t come as a shock. An Orthodox man wearing a kippah or a woman in a sheitel and long skirt walking down the street is far more conspicuous—and therefore vulnerable—than a Jew who can blend in. It was Haredi Jews in Brooklyn and elsewhere who were targeted during a spate of antisemitic violence over the past several years. And Orthodox Jews are, in general, less inclined to follow the liberal consensus that shapes so much of mainstream Jewish life and thus more willing to deviate from Jewish civic norms on guns.

Many Jews, it turns out, have not only made peace with gun culture—they’ve embraced it.

A Modern Orthodox rabbi who guided his congregation through difficult debates more than five years ago told me that Jewish tradition is somewhat ambivalent about guns. On one side stands the prohibition against keeping anything in one’s home that poses an unreasonable risk of harm. The Talmud warns: “One should not breed a bad dog in his house, or keep an impaired ladder in his house … You shall bring not blood upon your house” (Bava Kama 46a; Deuteronomy 24:8). Some authorities see unnecessary weapons as falling into that same category of forbidden dangers.

On the other side is the obligation to preserve life. Jewish law elevates the protection of life, pikuach nefesh, above nearly every other commandment. The Torah commands, “You shall not stand by [the shedding of] your fellow’s blood” (Leviticus 19:16). Rashi interprets this to mean that one may not stand idle while another is in mortal danger, whether from drowning, a wild animal, or an armed attacker. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 73a) codifies this as a legal requirement to intervene by whatever means necessary. Guns, then, exist in a gray space between potential danger and potential salvation.

Tablet writer Liel Leibovitz noted, “The Jewish way of gun ownership is more about responsibility than power. It doesn’t flex its muscles or measure its worth in calibers. It’s precisely what the license says it ought to be: concealed, there when you need it and unobtrusive when you don’t.” That ethos has informed new organizations that seek to bring Jewish life and self-defense into closer conversation.

In San Diego, a Jewish shooting club called Guns ’N’ Moses was founded by Alex Dovgalevsky. His goal is to help Jews—whether novices or experienced shooters—gain competence and confidence in handling firearms responsibly. He describes this work as a mitzvah, rooted in the Torah’s commandment not to stand by while your fellow’s blood is shed. The group reflects a grassroots impulse: ordinary Jews taking steps to reclaim their own defense.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Magen Am USA—”Shield of the Nation”—was founded by former IDF soldiers and community volunteers. It provides licensed, armed security for Jewish institutions across LA and Orange County, free of charge. Rabbis, teachers, and lay leaders participate. Magen Am describes its mission as building a culture of readiness and deterrence in response to a sharp uptick in antisemitic violence. Together with grassroots shooting clubs, it shows how Jewish communities are experimenting with different models of self-protection.

Still, the question of whether Jews should arm themselves in synagogue remains highly divisive.

I saw these tensions up close on a recent visit to my parents’ Reform temple in South Florida. A couple of years ago, my father—now 83 and half-deaf after an ill-fated trip to the gun range—asked the rabbi, himself in his late eighties, if he could carry at services. The rabbi didn’t hesitate: “Sure.” Not everyone was pleased. Silvia, 87, who could launch into a Trump tirade faster than most can say “Shabbat Shalom,” made her opinion clear. During the Oneg, she thanked me for the talk I’d given, then peered at my father and declared, “I don’t want an octogenarian bringing a gun to temple.” My father ignored her. I leaned toward my mother and whispered, “She has a point.”

Law enforcement officials warn that armed congregants could complicate active-shooter responses, making it harder to distinguish between attacker and defender. Within the Jewish community itself, the debate continues to surface in congregational meetings, rabbinical rulings, and even family conversations over Oneg Shabbat.

A Modest Proposal to My Fellow Jews

We live in a moment when Jewish life in America feels more vulnerable than it has in decades. The threats are real, and we cannot outsource all responsibility for our safety. With that in mind, I want to offer a modest proposal:

First, we should drop the sneering rhetoric about guns. Too often, Jewish discourse is laced with derision for those who own guns or advocate for them. A little empathy, even if we disagree, is a Jewish value too.

Second, Jews should learn to shoot. Every Jew should go to the gun range at least once. You may never own a firearm, let alone carry one—but you should at least know what it feels like to handle one safely, to understand its power as well as its risks.

Third, Jewish organizations should consider providing training. On a voluntary basis, synagogues, schools, and Jewish nonprofits should give their staff and boards the opportunity to experience basic firearms safety at a gun range.

Fourth, we should be honest about the politics of gun control. For decades, many mainstream Jewish organizations have poured energy into advocating for gun control measures that have no realistic chance of passing.

Finally, circumstances should guide personal decisions. Whether to carry a firearm is not a question with a one-size-fits-all answer. Each of us must weigh our own risks, responsibilities, and comfort level. As for me, I’d like more training. Whether I’ll actually acquire a firearm, I haven’t decided. For now, the only thing I’m certain of is that pretending the question doesn’t matter is no longer an option.

David Bernstein is the Founder and CEO of the North American Values Institute (NAVI).