Why then do so many American Jews hate guns and fear gun ownership so much?

Our research identifies ten reasons why these Jews feel the way they do about self defense in general, firearms specifically and your own right to keep and bear arms.

The adamantly anti-gun-rights Jews are bowing to:
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.

Despite the modern American Jewish aversion to arms, it has not always been so, and Israeli Jews certainly understand the value of arms. Throughout history, there were Jews who fought in defense of their people and way of life. The Torah is filled with Jews who took up arms in righteous and valiant defensive action. See, for example, The Ten Commandments of Self Defense, (Bendory and JPFO, 2009); or recall, “When Abraham heard that his nephew Lot was taken captive, he took the 318 trained soldiers of his house and pursued the captors,” defeated them, brought back Lot, and exacted retribution with their looted property. (Genesis 14:14)

Contemporary Jews may have largely acquiesced to their WWII inquisitors, but Biblical Jews resisted their Egyptian slave masters and then fought countless fierce battles against invaders and anti-Semites, such as Amelek, the Philistines and Haman.

Jews have been assaulted, accosted, and oppressed by nearly every nation and empire in history, including the ancient Greeks, Romans, Persians, Byzantines, Ottomans and of course modern nations like Germany and the USSR.

Miraculously, Jews have outlasted all those who would annihilate them, typically by using force of arms. Perhaps their liberal modern approach to assault and suffering -- “Don’t fight back, it will only make matters worse” -- holds lessons for us. Or perhaps not: it is very hard to witness open-pit graves piled high with emaciated corpses without emotional revulsion. How much worse could matters get?