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 course everyone else is like. What are [00:03:00] you, what are you talking about? Everybody knew this could happen. Everybody, and they're like, no, no, no. It must have been something we did. I, I can't see any other reason this could have happened. And, and worse, and I mean, we're talking about this and we're not going to do a full episode on, on this particular topic, but I have just been so ashamed even with how little I think of progressives in the U.

S., how they have treated these horrifying massacres. I saw a top. post on Reddit arguing that the, the, the massacre of the babies was their heads being cut off was a fake stunt perpetrated. This is on front page of Reddit, or at least my front page perpetrated by the Israeli government.

Simone Collins: God, I wish that were true.

I like, I genuinely wish that were

Malcolm Collins: true.

It gets worse, Lloyd. My parakeet, Petey. Huh? He's dead.

Oh. Oh, man. I'm sorry, Harry. [00:04:00] What happened? His head fell off. His head fell off?

Yeah, he was pretty old.

Malcolm Collins: I saw. You know, classes in Harvard right now, you know, we've heard about them being from from our contacts who are at school. They're right now being canceled. So all of the students, these are grad students, by the way, can go out and protest the bus that is protesting that horrifying letter that said that Hamas has 0 percent blame for this.

The state of Israel has 100 percent blame for this. It's horrifying. And if you look at the things leading up to the people like, oh, Israel was so horrible to the people of Gaza, the very reason why it's Israel didn't expect to be attacked right now was because they had been so quickly and, and, and, and hugely loosening sanctions on Gaza and increasing work visas to the people of Gaza because they were trying to do this deal with Saudi Arabia.

They had been really focused recently on [00:05:00] increasing quality of life there. And so when they saw really huge troop movements in the area that were really obvious, they were like, Oh the one these movements are so obvious that it must be something else like it can't possibly be that they're about to attack us because they wouldn't make it this obvious, especially given, you know, the way the people would react, given all of the, the, the looser sanctions and stuff like this.

Remember, we need... And you will make it through! This isn't random, Ramite. Someone made a mistake. That's it. We're empty, ma'am.

Big goddamn mistake.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that this is where this mindset where it's like. Oh, they're attacking us because they're mad at us. It's like, no, they're attacking you because it's [00:06:00] like theologically mandated that you cease existing in this area. It doesn't matter what you do for them. They still have to kill you if they follow this cultural tradition.

And I should be clear, not all Islamic cultural traditions feel that way.

I mean, there's a reason why. Other Islamic countries have refused. To take. Palestinian refugees throughout this attack, , there's a reason why. , other Arab countries have refused to, accept Palestine as a state under their control. Because it is a radically different islamic culture than other islamic

cultures

also with another quick side note here, I want to dispel. A misconception that has been going around a lot. That Hamas was only supported by a minority of Gazans, or it was like, It's not a mainstream organization was in Gaza over 50% of the population in Gaza support. , hammas to put this in context, only 37% of Germans supported Hitler's rise to power.

I think it's important for people to ask themselves. Why are people pretending [00:07:00] like Hamas is this weird splinter organization? controlling the people of Gaza. And forcing them to do things they don't want to, but we