SHMA.COM
Mindy Finkelstein, a 26-year-
old gun-violence survivor,
works to promote common
sense gun legislation by
volunteering with the Brady
Campaign to Prevent Gun
Violence as well as Women
Against Gun Violence, and
recently organized Victory Over
Violence, a race to benefit
other survivors like herself.
hospital and was denied entrance. He was so
sick that the Aryan Nations kicked him out for
being “a threat to their cause.” But all this did
not prevent him from legally purchasing a semi-automatic weapon at a gun show. I’m convinced that — just as a car is to drive from one
point to another — the sole purpose of a gun is
to kill. Having a license to operate one should be
regulated.
According to the Coalition to Stop Gun
Violence, the “current federal law requires criminal background checks only for guns sold
through licensed firearm dealers.” The “
loophole in the law allows individuals [criminal,
mentally disturbed, and everyday citizens alike]
not engaged in the business of selling firearms
to sell guns without a license and without processing any paperwork.” This is how Furrow
obtained the weapon he used against me. This
so-called loophole needs to be closed so people
like Furrow cannot attempt to commit such
heinous acts with ease.
I have devoted much time over the past
years to work for common sense gun laws. My
goal in life is to prevent others from experiencing gun violence. I’ve accepted this responsibility on behalf of the people who weren’t as lucky
as I was — people like Joseph Ileto. Parents of
murdered children have told me that I can represent their children, children who no longer
have voices. Though I will never bring their children’s voices back to life, I can draw on my experiences, my face, and my voice to show how
gun violence destroys. Hopefully, that might create something positive from the bullets that
ripped through my leg ten years ago.
Guns, Gun Control, and American Jews
TOM DIAZ
Tom Diaz, author of Making a
Killing: The Business of Guns in
America (The New Press), is a
senior policy analyst at the
Violence Policy Center in
Washington, D.C. His most
recent book is No Boundaries:
Transnational Latino Gangs
and American Law
Enforcement (University of
Michigan Press).
Iknow a Jewish scholar who works at a think tank and keeps a handgun in his sub- urban home. I work with Jewish advocates
who favor the most stringent regulation of
firearms. I watched a Hassidic rabbi banter with
his pro-gun gentile peers at a national gun industry convention, lamenting the designs of liberals on their “rights.” And the scientist father
of one of my child’s classmates in a Jewish day
school wouldn’t own a gun but has no problem
with those who do.
So, what do Jews in America think about
guns and gun control? The question reflects our
broad sociopolitical spectrum. And it is talmudic; an exquisitely ambiguous Second Amendment text demands explication. The obvious
answers turn out to be touchstones for more
questions. There are conflicting opinions on
everything.
Although the use of firearms raises interesting halakhic issues about self-defense and
hunting, Jews in America are not divided over
guns by religious dogma. To the extent that they
are divided, it is because of social and political
views, held by some with the intensity and certainty of religious conviction.
These convictions are grounded in the
urban orientation of most Jews, which conflicts
sometimes with the views of American Jews in
the western and southern states. The most comprehensive recent exploration of the landscape
of Jews in America — the American Jewish
Committee’s 2005 publication, Jewish Distinctiveness in America: A Statistical Portrait — noted
that Jews are “heavily concentrated in large metropolitan areas…[and] are the group most fearful
of walking alone at night and among the least
likely to own a gun or hunt.” Jews are also said
to have “the greatest support for gun control.”
Moreover, Jews are “solidly Democratic in
party identification and presidential voting and
self-identifying as liberal.” Jews have voted
overwhelmingly Democratic in every presidential election since 1968, with the exception of
the 1980 contest between Jimmy Carter, Ronald
Reagan, and John Anderson.
On the other hand, Democrats in Congress
have run away from gun control ever since their
loss of the House of Representatives in 1994, a
disaster conventional wisdom blames on the
passage of an assault weapons ban. Voting
Democratic today does not mean voting for gun
control. The issue has a low priority, shunned
to give political breathing room to other issues,
such as health care. Jewish legislators who
were once leaders in gun control are now conspicuously silent. It is not clear whether American Jews as a whole have made the same
calculation. But it is difficult to discern a Jewish tidal wave of gun-control activism.
At the same time, Jews strongly support
civil liberties, even for “various socially and/or
politically suspect groups.” Jews believe in the
very American concept of inalienable rights, the
