For many, owning a gun was taboo. Now they’re buying them.
PITTSBURGH — Outside of that one time going to target practice with some friends while he was in medical school, the first time David picked up a gun to learn how to use it — this time for protection — was five years ago, when he went to a range a few weeks after Robert Bowers walked into the Tree of Life synagogue and killed 11 people who had gathered to worship not far from David’s home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
“Handling a gun, let alone owning one, was not anything I had ever considered doing in my life,” said David, who asked that his full name not be used for fear of personal safety of himself and his family.
Once a taboo thought
“The ‘tradition’ of gun ownership, historically, in my family was virtually non-existent. Perhaps one of my grandfathers, who both served in World War II, had one — if they did, though, it was never discussed,” explained David, 49, who grew up on the Main Line of Philadelphia.
Under the keen eye of a trained instructor, who was also Jewish, David was surprised at how comfortable he was handling a gun. As someone who grew up in a community in which owning guns was unthinkable, he was surprised at how many of his friends also owned guns.
“Growing up, the mere thought of owning a gun or handling a gun was taboo. However, once I started having conversations with people after Tree of Life, I found the reality is everybody might be somebody who would buy a gun. It just depends on what it takes to get one,” he explained.
Still, he and his wife shelved the idea five years ago.
Then Oct. 7 happened — and everything else that went with it in the following days and weeks, like the brazen antisemitic graffiti splattered on the front wall of Allderdice High School and throughout the Summerset neighborhood, as well as the tire slashings, the defacing and burning of lawn signs that support Israel, and the woman using a hammer to hit the window of Marvista Design where a sign read “We Stand With Israel.”
Along the Murray-Forbes business corridor, people have been defiantly tearing down Israeli hostage posters, incidents that David says makes him feel the need to hide evidence of his faith when taking a walk.
His fear is justified. Antisemitism in this country has reached what the FBI categorizes as a “historic level.” Last month, the Anti-Defamation League reported antisemitic incidents in the United States rose by about 400% in the first two weeks alone after the war broke out. By the end of October, that number hit an average of 28 a day — and is still climbing.
Looking to buy
In response, Jews like David — who never once considered handling a gun in their entire lives — have been signing up for gun safety classes, either in groups or in one-on-one sessions at local ranges across the city and the region. And buying them, as are many other Americans.
According to the FBI, more background checks on gun sales were run this October than last October. The National Shooting Sports Foundation reports over 1.3 million gun checks, an 8.3% increase over the same period in 2022.
Larry Anderson, a security professional who began his career decades ago as a certified shooting instructor, said he began gun safety and handling instructions here in Squirrel Hill recently because of the spread of interest in self-protection in the community; his first class was almost exclusively women.
The class was free. “I did it for free because it is a way to give back. It’s a Tzedakah,” he said, using the Hebrew word used for charitable giving. He’s adding dozens more classes because of demand.
The people in his classes aren’t just going to the range to learn how to properly handle a firearm, said Mr. Anderson, who is Jewish. They are also learning how to store one, the laws of carrying one — and how to buy one.
Mr. Anderson said it is interesting to watch the expression that crosses a mother’s or a grandmother’s or a young woman’s face when she goes from someone who has always looked at gun ownership with either hesitancy or revulsion to the realization that it empowers her. It has nothing to do with politics.
It’s similar to a moment in the movie “Shane,” he said, when the gunfighter tells a mother annoyed at him for teaching her young son to draw and shoot that the gun is not something to fear. Instead, he says it’s “a tool, like a shovel or a hammer or an axe. It’s not bad in and of itself; it’s what you do with it.”
A new understanding transforms how they view guns. “It is the same approach with the people who are looking to protect, primarily, their children — young parents with school age children — and they see the ‘We stand with Israel’ signs being defaced. They see the incidents in Philadelphia. And they realize, ‘Yes, this is just a tool to defend ourselves.’”
Muhlenberg College political science professor Chris Borick said that the identification of gun ownership with the Republican Party is a recent development in the ever-increasing polarization in American politics, where everything seems to be becoming a political hot potato. Gun ownership used to transcended politics and was, at one time, a fascinating overlay, he said.
“You think about Democrat, Republican, and the makeup of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party — and geographically where they were — guns historically transcended lots of those lines. You could be a Southern Democrat and be a big hunter, or the Republican country club member to never pick up a gun in your life.” The shift to classic partisan divides on the topic began with the Reagan assassination attempt and have been unfolding ever since.
Everyone will buy a gun
That tracks, said David of his suburban family roots along the Main Line and the cultural distance between his family and gun ownership.
David said he has come around to realizing that — as one-by-one his friends go from “maybe” to “yes” to actually buying a gun — when he gets to that threshold, he won’t be giving up a part of his cultural identity. “I really believe everyone I know is at some stage of buying a gun, and it all just depends on how far you feel pushed to do it.”
“When you felt threatened enough, you do it. And I think I’m just taboo’d out.”