By Bruce S. Ticker
PHILADELPHIA — Jewish Republicans, your brethren have a critical assignment for you – pressure your fellow Republicans to establish strong gun control measures.
Granted, you may feel slighted if you learned that Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto dampened attention to anti-Semitism with his statement: “Mass shootings in this country, no matter where the crime had been, have one common denominator – the accessibility of guns that have been designed to kill people.”
Peduto, who is not Jewish, lives five blocks from the Tree of Life Synagogue in the city’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood where an anti-Semitic maniac murdered Rose Mallinger, Joyce Fienberg, Dr. Richard Gottfried, Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax, Irving Younger, Bernice Simon and her husband Sylvan, and brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal.
They were shot down last Saturday morning by a killer who wielded a Colt AR-15 and three Glock .357 pistols. The murder scene was characterized as rivaling the outcome of a bus bombing in Jerusalem or a gas chamber at Auschwitz.
State Sen. Jay Costa, who worships as a Catholic and grew up three blocks from the Tree of Life, summed up what his Jewish friends want: “They want to be able to worship in peace.”
Eleven of our fellow Jews are dead because a deranged man could access firearms. Just like others at a Jewish Federation office in Seattle and in front of Jewish facilities in Overland Park, Kansas. And children were threatened by a gunman at a Jewish community center in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. Thousands of other Americans were gunned down in mosques, churches, schools, shopping centers, city streets and in their own homes.
“When you combine heated, divisive political rhetoric with easy access to lethal weaponry, the possibility of these kinds of incidents happening is even more troubling,” says Adam Skaggs, the chief counsel of the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, as quoted in The New York Times.
Without firearms, how else could a crazed person harm a gathering of people? Or at least produce as much damage as mowing down 11 human beings and wounding some others? Or 58 people at a concert in Las Vegas?
Donald Trump’s response? “If they had some kind of a protection inside the temple, maybe it could have been a very much different situation. There would have been no one killed – except him.”
Advocates have long professed that gun control legislation is required to keep firearms out of reach of these assassins. New laws might not prevent all these incidents, but it will likely thwart a great many of them. These measures will not take firearms away from responsible gun owners.
Only Congress can accomplish this, and most Republicans have repeatedly refused to vote for such laws.
That’s where you, Jewish Republicans, enter the picture. The pro-Israel community and the firearms lobby are known as the top two funders of political campaigns. Republican members of Congress and presidential candidates rely on both lobbies.
Jewish Republicans are hardly monolithic about firearms. The Republican Jewish Coalition makes that clear as part of its mission statement:
“Social issues such as abortion, gay rights, gun control…are topics that generate strong emotions on all sides. The RJC membership and Board of Directors are as divided as the rest of America on these issues. The RJC recognizes that many good people hold opposing views on these matters and we respect the differences of opinion among our membership.”
That statement affords Jews in the GOP a foundation for applying their influence with and access to the President and Republicans in Congress.
The prime outline for gun control comprises universal checks for criminal and mental-health backgrounds and a ban on assault weapons. I can see how some proposals can still be too weak to be fully effective while others can be too strong to be fair to gun owners. Congress can work this out without much trouble.
Among these provisions, even if a person has not been adjudicated mentally ill, as the Times reports, a legislative proposal in Pennsylvania – of all places – would permit the police or relatives to petition a judge to temporarily remove weapons from people who appear to be a threat to themselves or others.
Of course, firearms access impacts all 320 million Americans, but every American Jew now has a deep personal stake with this issue. Jewish Republicans have an opportunity to step up. Did I say opportunity? It is their obligation as Americans.
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Ticker is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. Comments on this article may be posted below.
As the child of Holocast survivors, born in Eastern Europe, Once we were able to get out of that he’ll hole called Rumania, 3 things my parents told me for personal protection: as a Jew to make sure my passport is always up to date, I have some cash on hand and never but never to be without a weapon (gun) and well trained In its use. My parents passed away some 30 years ago, but their teaching was and is passed on to my children and grand children. Never Again.
So the answer to prevent the deaths of unarmed Jew at the Hands of Anti-Semites is to create MORE unarmed Jews for the Anti-Semites to murder? This is mshuge! If disarming in the face of your enemies is sound logic, than perhaps the IDF should be disarmed to promote peace with the Palestinians. You invoke Auschwitz, do you not remember that handful of guns in the hands of Jews kept the Nazis at bay for months in the Warsaw Ghetto? This horrible man attacked your Brothers and Sisters because he KNEW they would be unarmed. If he thought otherwise he would not have attacked and THAT is the power of an armed citizenry against monsters like this guy. Seriously, you folks need to learn from your own history…being vulnerable has never worked out well for Jews.