Since the Hamas massacre on October 7th, American Jews have been flooding gun shops in the US. Several US news outlets, including NBC and CNN, have reported the phenomenon.
“We’ve definitely seen a tremendous increase in religious Jewish people, Orthodox people, purchasing firearms,” said David Kowalsky, the Jewish owner of a gun store in the town of Hollywood, Florida, told NBC.
“I’ve seen a surge in interest in individual training as well as group training. “These are mothers and teachers, the majority of them are mostly people who have never interacted with firearms or thought about owning them. “There’s a safety concern. I think people are nervous about what’s going on and what can happen,” he explained.
Kowalsky added that local synagogues ask him to host gun training seminars and shooting sessions.
Gene Petrino, a retired SWAT commander in Coral Springs, Florida, told CNN he’s gotten roughly 15 to 20 Jewish people per week who ask to join his training courses. "They want to know about situational awareness and how they can learn to spot a threat before an attack occurs,” he said.
Tzvi Waldman, the owner of a gun club in Rockland County, New York, told CNN: "I’m getting extra help, to help answer the phone, to reply to the emails and to make sure that everyone is serviced... Since what happened in Israel, we have done three classes at probably four or five times the size."
A poll conducted by the Jewish Federations of North America found Jews were roughly twice as likely as non-Jewish people to say they’ve been worried about their safety in the past month. The Anti-Defamation League said it recorded 312 antisemitic incidents across the United States over the first three weeks after the war between Israel and Hamas broke out, including instances of harassment and assault.