Gun Extremism and the Latest Exploitation of the Jewish People
How this played out recently in the Texas Legislature
On April 29, The Senate Committee on Constitutional Issues — a sham committee that the Texas Legislature formed just the week before — held a hearing on House Bill 1927. This legislation seeks to dismantle background check and training requirements to carry a loaded handgun in public and is opposed by a majority of voters including gun owners and Republicans.
Women and mothers speaking in opposition to the bill filled the hearing room while men spoke in support, most of whom wore t-shirts which read, “Gun Owners of America” on the front and “Victory or Death” on the back. A number of them were armed, with handguns visibly holstered. At least one man had firearms strapped to both of his legs. Some heckled during women’s and survivors’ heartfelt testimonies.
This is the fourth Texas Legislative Session in which I have participated as a gun violence prevention activist, but this hearing stood out from others because it was the first time that my identity as a Jewish person was a recurring theme. Given the historic ties between gun extremism and anti-Semitism, I should not have been surprised; still, it left me breathless to hear my heritage used as a pawn to pass a horrific gun bill in the State Capitol.
Several hours into the hearing, a 16 year-old Houston sophomore spoke in opposition to the bill: “On Saturday, October 27, 2018, I got an alert on my phone that there had been a shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Eleven victims.”
This young man learned that his grandparents had been married at the Tree of Life Synagogue. He continued, “It didn’t just hit close to home; it forced me and my community to consider how safe we really were.” Dylan implored the Committee (of which there are no Jewish members) not to allow untrained, unvetted anti-Semites to carry in public.
Shortly after, another 10th grade student testified against the bill, eloquently stating, “The reality of why I am here is because of the fear that has been instilled in people of my faith all around the nation…the Jewish people are fighters…but we need your help to disarm hate.”
A bit later, a man in favor of the bill referenced the students’ comments and ended his testimony by exclaiming, “The Jews…Jewish people…should remember what happened in WWII when people were disarmed.” The Committee Chair interrupted this man because his allotted time had expired but did not chastise him for his words.
I had a strangely familiar feeling that this wasn’t really happening. Is this a threat? Is he just ignorant or unaware? Is someone going to shut him down? All these thoughts raced through my head.
Regardless of this man’s intentions, I was shocked that he chose to assert his expertise on the Holocaust and tell Jewish people what’s good for them while every member of the Committee stared silently.
This was not an isolated incident, however; this man’s claim is one that gun extremists have peddled for years: had the Nazis not disarmed the Jewish people, that somehow they could have reasonably defended themselves against the atrocities of the Holocaust.
Sources have disproven this false narrative. According to Politifact, “strict German gun regulation was in place before Hitler rose to power and he later oversaw gun laws that loosened many firearm restrictions,” allowing some residents to own handguns through a permitting system. Regulations were introduced to prohibit Jews from owning firearms, but the Nazis had already been raiding Jewish homes by then. The Anti-Defamation League explained in 2013 that “the small number of personal firearms in the hands of the small number of Germany’s Jews (about 214,000) remaining in Germany in 1938 could in no way have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state.”
The claim that an armed Jewish uprising could have been a credible defense is not only absurd, it’s also deeply offensive to blame victims for their own suffering — and even more offensive to hear this repeated by those associated with the gun rights movement, considering its own troubling history of anti-Semitism. For years, extremists have portrayed Jewish people as “gun grabbers’’ and threats to white nationalism. This was particularly apparent in the wake of the Parkland, Florida shooting.
Here in Texas in 2013, C.J. Grisham founded Open Carry Texas, an aggressive and radical voice on gun rights. Grisham is also an active leader with the Texas Chapter of the Proud Boys, a known hate group that promotes racism and political violence and of which a number of members epouse anti-Semitic ideology. At events including the January 2020 insurrection at the United States Capitol, Proud Boys members wore shirts emblazoned with the symbol “6MWE:” Six Million Wasn’t Enough.
At least one prominent national gun rights organization has clear ties to anti-Semitism. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Larry Pratt, the Executive Director of Gun Owners of America (GOA) for the past 40 years, “had been a speaker at the 1992 Gathering of Christian Men in Estes Park, Colo., where he rubbed shoulders with neo-Nazis, Klansmen, adherents of the anti-Semitic Christian Identity theology, and other radicals.” Nevertheless, with the support of GOA’s 300,000 members and an aggressive lobbying strategy, Pratt continues to be influential in Congress and in the national media.
Given this context, it should not be terribly shocking that a week before I sat in a hearing room filled with armed GOA members, this same organization distributed anti-Semitic flyers targeting Oregon State Representative Rachel Prusak, a gun violence survivor, for her commitment to pass gun safety legislation.
GOA’s web address appears at the bottom of these flyers. A few GOA supporters loosely denied the organization’s involvement on Twitter, though I’ve yet to see a public statement from leadership.
I had chosen to devote part of my testimony to admonishing the Texas Legislature’s senior leadership for meeting with GOA’s leadership within days of this hateful act, not knowing that before my name was called, two brave Jewish teenagers would speak beautifully about their experiences, followed by a man rewriting Jewish history before an aloof Committee.
What I didn’t share that day is that, like almost every Jewish person, my family and I have experienced insulting comments. Bigotry has many faces. Sometimes it’s overt: verbally abusive, or — as in the shootings at the Tree of Life Synagogue and a kosher grocery store in Jersey City — violent. But other times it may take a more obscure form through a thinly-veiled slur or by using groups as pawns to further one’s goals and then carelessly tossing them away when empathy becomes inconvenient.
Despite the disturbing history behind the gun lobby and the vast outpouring of opposition to this legislation, a majority of Committee members approved HB 1927 that day, and the full Senate passed it the following week. But those of us in the gun violence prevention movement will never give up. Generations of survival are buried deep in my bones; I’m a fighter, joined by an army of fighters with their own stories. We will continue to be a voice for sensible gun laws and for those who are disproportionately impacted by violence. And all along the way, we’ll expose the hate, lies, and bigotry lurking behind the dismantling of our gun laws, giving the world a chance to decide whose side to choose.
