This is rather disturbing. I've seen this group (RAC) marching against gun ownership. Read it for yourself. These are the "holocaust mentality" Jews I refer to when they want us to rely on the government.
http://rac.org/advocacy/issues/issuegc/ Jewish Values and Gun Control
Mark J. Pelavin
Associate Director,
The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
September, 1999
In recent weeks, my office has received more than a dozen letters this week lambasting the Reform Movement's support for gun control. While the number of letters is relatively small, it is more feedback than many other controversial issues have garnered. In sum, these letters assert that the shootings at the Los Angeles Jewish Community Center summer camp underscore the folly of Jews supporting gun control; they cite historical precedent (mainly the Warsaw Ghetto uprising) as support for the assertion that only when Jews have guns have they been able to preserve Jewish honor and dignity. They point to Israel as an example of Jews' need for guns, and they use both Constitutional and Talmudic citations to rebut any attempt to limit access to firearms.
Yet, despite their appeals to history and the Judaic tradition, these pleas to oppose gun control are far from convincing. To argue that as Jews we must respond to gun violence with a paranoid impulse to grab our guns in self defense is a provincial and dangerous perspective. Such an argument assumes that a vast majority of the gun violence tearing America apart is specifically aimed at Jews, or, at a minimum, that the Jewish community has no stake in addressing the larger national epidemic of gun violence. Despite a rash of highly-publicized anti-Semitic incidents, it is simply not the case that Jews are disproportionate victims of gun violence. While we as a community undoubtedly feel under attack at the moment, the bigger picture does not support an ethos of constant persecution in America today.
In fact, study after study clearly demonstrates that the use of a firearm to resist a violent attack increases the likelihood of injury to the gun owner. According to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, "residents of homes where a gun is present are five times more likely to experience a suicide and three times more likely to experience a homicide than residents of homes without guns. Additionally, a gun kept in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a member of the household, or friend, than an intruder." Guns certainly endanger the rest of us. Every year, 35,000 Americans die from gun-inflicted injuries; 14 children are lost to gun violence every day in this country; and American children are more than 12 times as likely to die from gun violence as are the children of any other developed nation. If trends continue, 2003 will see gun violence overtake automobile accidents as the leading cause of fatalities in the United States.
The effort to call Jews to arms in self defense could have significant, and troubling, effects on our society. Arming ourselves to the teeth in a quest to protect our community would be questionably effective in accomplishing its goals, but it would undoubtedly lead to a greater balkanization within the United States. We would alienate ourselves from the larger society, and we would be seen (correctly in this case) as arming ourselves in direct opposition to those with whom we share this country. Just as most of us would be dismayed to see the African-American community or the gay and lesbian community self-segregate and stockpile weapons, so would the rest of America view Jews who did the same with suspicion and fear. The inadvertent but inescapable effect would be heightened incidents of prejudice, vandalism, and hate-fueled violence.
Our tradition calls for each of us to participate in tikkun olam, repair of the world. For us to insist that America's culture of gun violence — and the epidemic of killing that it has wrought — is important to us only as it effects our fellow Jews is to turn our backs on the rest of America. Admittedly, addressing society's problems is an overwhelming and perhaps unattainable goal, but our tradition demands no less. It is not up to us to complete the task, but neither are we free to desist from it.
We face a critical time: a period of unprecedented technology, of wondrous prosperity, and yet of great fear. We can choose to turn inward as a community, to protect only ourselves and our narrow interests, or we can look beyond our community, into our nation and our world, seeking common solutions, and working for the general welfare. The latter is the much harder path, but I believe that it is the one that will provide our children a better world, the one to which we as Jews are committed, and the one to which we should all rededicate ourselves. Let that commitment be our resolution for the new year.
Note: This op-ed ran in Jewish newspapers nationwide.
Topic: Reform Jewish movement anti-gun? (Read 13186 times)