Across the country (or at least in those states that haven’t made it extraordinarily difficult to exercise your Second Amendment rights) gun shops are reporting a surge in sales and increased interest in training in the wake of Hamas’ terror campaign in Israel and calls to attack Jews around the globe.

In Hollywood, Florida gun shop owner David Kowalsky says sales have increased roughly 300% over the past week or so, with most of his new customers spurred on to take their personal safety more seriously by both events in Israel and concerns over anti-Semitic attacks closer to home.

“Israeli and Orthodox Jews for the most part,” said Kowalsky. “Just wanting to be trained to protect their families and have a firearm at home or on their person. Since last Saturday, we have seen a tremendous public display of how prevalent anti-Semitism is and hate speech and how they want to rid the world of Jews.”

On Monday night at his store, a group of Jewish woman took an introduction course on guns.

Endi Tennenhaus told Local 10 News most of the men in her synagogue are arming themselves.

“We said, ‘What about the women?’ We need to do the things we need to do to prepare,” Tennenhaus said. “To stay safe and to be able to use a gun, God forbid if we ever should need one.”

David Prince is seeing the same phenomenon at Eagle Gun Range’s locations in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

“It’s been a really big change this last three or four days,” Prince said. “The people coming in and saying they are scared for their lives, because of their religion they are expecting to be attacked.”

Prince says he’s seen a 300% increase in gun sales at his two locations immediately after the recent conflict surfaced in Israel and the Gaza strip. The customers, he says, are primarily Jewish, like a customer named Jake who agreed to explain his motivation for visiting the Farmers Branch location on Friday to practice at the shooting range.

“It was like literally living in the middle of a horror movie,” he said of watching news coverage of the Hamas attacks and Israeli reprisals in his native country. He asked not to show his face or use his full name because of social media chatter about Israelis all over the world becoming potential targets too.

“From my experience in Israel, whenever something big happens, the Jews around the world, they suffer from it too as well,” he said. “With what’s going on over there, I’m more concerned of something going bad.”

Curiously, I haven’t run across any similar reports in states like California or New York, and I can’t help but think that the onerous and burdensome gun control regimes in those places are having a chilling effect on would-be gun owners.

If Endi Tennenhaus wants to carry a gun for self-defense in Florida its easy for her to do so. She doesn’t even need to wait for the state to issue her a concealed carry license so long as she can lawfully possess her gun.

If Tennenhaus lived in California, on the other hand, it could take her months on end and a thousand dollars or more just to apply for her carry license, and even if she wanted to simply keep a gun in her home for self-defense she’d be forced to wait at least ten days before being allowed to pick her new gun up from her local shop.

I don’t blame Tennenhaus or anyone else for deciding that now is the time to start exercising their Second Amendment rights. When you’ve got terrorists calling for the eradication of Jews around the globe and images of barbaric brutality towards innocent civilians, including children, protecting yourself and your loved ones is a reasonable and common-sense step to take. Like Tennenhaus, I hope that these precautions are unnecessary, but in the increasingly unstable world we live in it is wise to equip yourself with the tools you need to keep yourself safe… and to embrace your right to keep and bear arms.