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Why Don't Jews Own Guns?
We discuss the surprising history behind Jewish gun ownership rates, including how repeated pogroms selected for urban Jews who fled rather than fought back. We explain why an urban, intellectual tradition doesn't encourage individual gun ownership, and how Israel is exerting new evolutionary pressures.
Simone Collins: [00:00:00] So... Jews and guns.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. So if our book, The Pragmatist's Guide to Religion, used one of those cheeky titles where somebody, you know, like, why don't zebras get cancer or something like that? You know, where it's like one interesting thing that the book like goes too deeply into it would be, why don't Jews own guns?
And, and the, this is a uniquely like, like vexing question. So I'm not going to go into the stats. If you want to go into all the stats and the citation. You can go look at the book, but if I was to expect that, like, like if you look at Jewish history, there are two things that I would expect of every Jew, never live in a city, always have a gun.
Simone Collins: Everyone has a gun.
Malcolm Collins: And this is very interesting to me because if you look at our cultural. Background like our cult of art. You want to call it that it tells us to do both of those things. It tells us, you know, do arms training when you were a young kid, always have, you have a gun behind you. We have a gun in almost every room of our house.
I [00:01:00] decided to add a little screenshot here. Of Simone standing desk where she works or within arm's reach is an AR 15 and right behind her in that shot is a Remington.
And right where I'm laying down to record this right now, where I edit the videos next to my bed is a Walter CCP pestle. there's almost nowhere in our house where we spend a significant amount of time where there is not a firearm was in arms reach.
Malcolm Collins: You know, and if you look at modern times, this is a uniquely interesting question, like even in Israel gun ownership rates are Thank you. Very low, weirdly, weirdly low. I mean, like people in
Simone Collins: the army, they're trained in, in gun use, you know? Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Like they should be one of the most gun literate and, and, and thus gun having people, I would suspect that in any population, if you look in Israel and we keep, you know, I read these horrifying stories of what happened when Hamas first attacked, and I keep wondering.
Why didn't this old lady have an AR 15 on her wall? Like what was, why wouldn't she have that? She lived right next to [00:02:00] Gaza. That it's not like they didn't know that this attack may happen. Well, and when
Simone Collins: you think about this attack, if, if these, if people in all of these areas and I don't know what the concealed carry laws are in Israel, you know, like, but for example, if the, if the people of this festival.
If, you know, 25 percent of them had concealed carry, this would have played out very different if, you know, everyone had weapons in their house, if they lived in a kibbutz, especially if it was a kibbutz close to the border, like, this would have played out very differently, you know, the story, these terrifying stories of, you know, two kids alone at home, you know, their mom in another place on the phone with them as their home is being, I mean, if they had guns, again, this, this could have played
Malcolm Collins: out super differently.
And I'm saying here, you know, there are like progressive jews, they look at what happened. And they're like, Oh my God, I, I, I, I never expected the, the, the people of Gaza to do this. And everyone else is like, what are you talking about? They're like, Muslims going around and beheading people? That's so out of character.
What? And then, and then of cour
Published on 2 years, 1 month ago