Maybe Guns Should Be Part of Some People's Culture

The right to keep and bear arms was enshrined in our Constitution as a way to make sure that firearms could never be taken from us. Our Founding Fathers knew good and well that no matter what, there were going to be circumstances they couldn't foresee that would necessitate us taking up arms to protect ourselves and our nation.

Mostly, it's been about protecting ourselves, thankfully, but anyone who tries to land troops in the United States is going to have a hard time. While Japanese Admiral Yamamoto probably never said it, the quote ascribed to him holds a great deal of truth. "There will be a rifle behind every blade of grass."

Unfortunately, this is something more or less unique to American culture, and that's a shame.

After all, after the Bondi Beach terrorist attack, American officials had a question about whether Australian Jews were arming themselves, and I personally find the answer upsetting.

Trump administration officials asked a visiting Australian Jewish leader whether Jews were seeking to be armed following the Bondi Beach terrorist attack, as the White House continues to take a significant interest in the spread of antisemitism in Australia.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin met US officials, including President Donald Trump’s antisemitism envoy, Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, during a visit last week, and briefed staff at the National Security Council, the State Department and Congress.

He said he received several questions in meetings about gun ownership in Australia and whether the Jewish community was proactively looking at taking up arms.

“I had to say to them, ‘Look, that’s just not part of our culture’,” he said in an interview in Washington. “Australians don’t think, ‘I better arm myself’. We’re not Second Amendment people; it’s not part of the mindset.”

Now, it does seem that there's been a little movement toward increasing security for Jewish religious observances. A measure that allows armed security at places of worship may be expanded to also allow it at events outside of the church or synagogue.

That's good news, but I find the whole attitude of "that's not part of our culture" and protecting yourself not being part of a nation's cultural mindset troubling, to say the least.

If nothing else, the government sufficiently proved it couldn't protect a large gathering of a religious group that had been targeted by extensive hate over the last several years from a terrorist attack perpetrated by the exact kind of people who tend to perpetrate terrorist attacks, namely, radical Muslims.

If they couldn't stop that, why would you assume that there's no reason to worry about the next time?

It may not be part of their culture, but that's a culture of subservience and entitlement, that people's rights should be subsumed by the state, and that the state owes them protection it has never proven it could remotely provide. Because of that, maybe it's time for some of these cultures to change.

While many of them look down on us in the United States, blaming our gun laws for the violent crime that seems so prevalent to them, the reality is that at least we can protect ourselves from a variety of threats they can't. Hell, we're still disarmed in too many places as it is, but we're a damn sight better off than Australians, the Brits, or literally anyone else on the planet because we can at least carry a gun on a daily basis.

I get that it's not their culture.

Their culture sucks.

Change it. 

Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.

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