That many Jews chose to immigrate to this country is no surprise. People of every conceivable ethnic group heard that America was a golden land of opportunity and they left their homelands to brave less than luxurious boat accommodations to bring themselves to these shores. 

The fact that America was not merely an economic Mecca, but a land  where citizens lived under the protection of clearly delineated rights was perhaps lost on many of the new immigrants. The citizenship classes that the new arrivals attended may have glossed over the topic, but it probably left little impression. Subsistence was priority Number One. A great many heads of households left their families abroad to work and earn money until such time that it would be possible to send for their kin. 

Unschooled in English and American cultural ways, the arrivals were regarded with indifference and even contempt by already acculturated immigrants who preceded them. Rights– were clearly not a concern. So long as they could be left to work and raise their economic status without government interference, the newcomers were content. After all, in the countries of their origins laws were created with the express purpose of hindering Jews in every way from pursuing a livelihood. It was common in many parts of Europe for Jews to be proscribed from land ownership. Jews were often taxed in excess of the taxation schedules applied to Gentiles. Here, finally, they could receive treatment equal to all other citizens. Under such radically new circumstances, they became Americanized and adept in navigating life in their new home. 

The Jews in America today are quite removed from the immigrant roots of their progenitors. We are very much a part of the American culture. Since we have always placed such strong emphasis on education, a disproportionate number of our people have risen to the upper levels of the corporate, academic, political and media worlds. The rights denied to Jews in Europe are enjoyed in America freely. Life is good. 

Herein lies a serious potential danger. Since the first major wave of Jewish immigration in the last two decades of previous century, the misery and oppression suffered at the hands of governments abroad have faded from memory. Rights freely extended and possessed by all are taken for granted, as if no other way of life could possibly exist.

Sadly, similar bright periods in our years of exile have undergone a metamorphosis before anyone could realize what had transpired. Shifts in government policies, even diminution of public disposition toward the Jewish population, have turned previous Golden Ages into periods of vehement persecution. Just because history repeats itself– has become a cliché does not detract from the thesis.

It is well documented that Jews and other classes were forbidden to possess arms in prewar Europe. Such had been the case for centuries prior to the last World War. Ownership of arms has always been the identifying mark of a free man. This privilege was traditionally restricted to the inner circle of rulership to which Jews were never permitted to enter. Any form of government, from monarchy through our modern day form of democracy, can only remain in power either by the consent of the governed or by means of force and intimidation. Armed subjects are a rogue government's greatest fear. Statutes limiting or prohibiting gun ownership by states and cities in the US a full century ago contain the language, for undesirable persons to possess firearms,– or similarly worded legalese.

Clearly, at its roots, anti-firearms legislation is the tool of a fearful, distrusting government.

Generation following generation living under economic and social restraints breeds a slave, or at best, subservient and passive mentality which is not easily removed from the gene pool. This is not to be construed as a condemnation of those who actually lived under such horrid conditions, only a studied observation.

The progeny of those early generations now living in the world's bastion of liberty must be educated, if at all possible, to shake off the mentality of the serf looking plaintively to his master for protection.

If the settlement of Jews in America is at all unique from any earlier place of rest in the Jewish Exile, it lies in the way our government was structured at its outset. For the first time in Jewish history we reside in a land governed by the permission of its populace, not by autocracy, oligarchy or rule by fiat.

The framers of the American Constitution, having broken ties and declared their independence from an autocracy, set into place very specific provisions for the greatest political experiment in modern times. They authored and ratified a Bill of Rights enumerating the basic needs of a people determined to never again be subject to the whims and caprices of the authority from which they now divested themselves.

These men knew from experience that a balance of power between government and governed can only be maintained by having an armed citizenry that could not be subjugated through a threat of force wielded against a powerless people.

It is often asked why the Jews, of all people, should have such difficulty with this concept of an armed citizenry being the only check on a government turning on its own people. Has it been so long since the last genocide in this century that no one, Jews especially, remembers? Do so many educated people, Jews especially, have such faith in the utter benevolence of our government that they discount a recurrence of what they've suffered time after time in the last millennia?

The government in our country is not radically different from that which existed in prewar Germany. The Germans proudly pointed to their democracy and held free elections, just as we do. What elected leaders in Germany did after the election in 1933 could not happen in our country only through the protections built into the American blueprint 200 years ago.

Do we revel in our right to self expression, even receive public funding for art, which many find offensive and sacrilegious? The proponents of free expression cite the Bill of Rights. Are we comforted by the fact that the police cannot forcibly enter our homes without a search warrant to sift through our personal records? The Bill of Rights gave us that protection, too.

Did Jews or Gentiles have such rights in any other country at any other time in history? Anyone who thinks so never got past primary school.

What keeps our government, well known for its rapacious appetite for increasing its power, from acting with total disregard for personal rights is our long tradition of firearms ownership to keep the snake de-fanged. This right to be armed, every citizen, is the sole difference between the United States and any other nation which boasts of a democracy. No member nation of the European Community has such a right in its Constitution. Neither does the state of Israel. Clearly, the Second Amendment as interpreted by leading legal scholars of our day is all that is standing between American citizens and volatility at the highest levels of the federal Government. The Second Amendment is very clear. Those that offer any interpretation that would relegate it to 
relic– status of a bygone era are blatantly asserting that the remainder of the Bill of Rights isn't worth a hoot, either.

This concept is so extraordinary in the history of the Jews that many refuse to come to terms with it, let alone embrace it. We are supposed to be victims. Not to garner sympathy, but because it's in our collective gene pool.

What will it take? Another genocide? Will the necessity for the Second Amendment need to be demonstrated again before Jews will at last become cognizant of the importance of an armed citizenry?

We live, perhaps, with too much comfort. The Jews in Spain prior to the Inquisition enjoyed government protection and good economic times. They practiced their religion freely, engaged in unfettered commerce, and were not herded into ghettos. Times changed, and so did the government's opinion of  its "Jews."

Our problem as Jews is certainly not stupidity. Neither is it forgetfulness. Our problem is being too easily seduced by comfort.

We look to a gracious government as a naïve child held in its mother's arms could never conceive of those warm, nurturing hands doing anything but soothe and comfort. Our gullibility, historically, is without peer. We don't forget past tragedies, but neither do we seem to learn anything from them. As a people, we've bought the Brooklyn Bridge over and over again.

For the Diane Feinsteins and Charlie Schumers among us, there is little reason for optimism that they will drop their asinine gullibility. They've sung their anti-gun opera for so long that no other score has for them any musical merit. It keeps them in the newspapers and provides them with a cushy income.

G-d called the generation of the Egyptian exodus a stiff-necked people.– This trait of inflexibility has worked in our favor to keep us a people after 3,500 years. Numerous sects and religions have come and gone in that same period of time. We are still around. We have, so far, survived total assimilation among the world's nations due to our inflexibility and refusal to break from traditions.

But this idiosyncrasy of ours must be used with thought and intelligence, something we are having a difficult time doing. We derive a multitude of benefits, mostly taken for granted, from the Bill of Rights. But we cherish the door without giving thought to the hinges on which it swings. Without the means to keep our would-be oppressors at bay, without the tools to make those that would be rid of us think hard and long, we will continue to buy state owned bridges.

A mistake in judgment once on a singular matter may be excusable. To commit the identical error while the previous occurrence is still fresh in the mind is indefensible stupidity.