All Jewish Spaces Need Armed Guards

'Queasiness' aside, only guns can stop would-be killers
By A Ali,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 11, 2009 3:12 PM CDT
All Jewish Spaces Need Armed Guards
A woman holds a candle as members of the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington hold their interfaith solidarity gathering at the DC Holocaust Museum.   (AP Photo)

Yesterday’s Holocaust Museum shooting should stifle the queasiness American Jews feel around weapons, Jeffrey Goldberg writes for the Atlantic. “One of the lessons of the Holocaust to me is that it is more difficult to kill an armed Jew than an unarmed Jew,” he says. Had the guards been unarmed, “the Holocaust Museum would have been the scene of a massacre.”

“The guards responded to [James] Von Brunn just as they should have, and shot him immediately without hurting a single bystander,” Goldberg says, calling on the Jewish community to arm guards at all their institutions. The guards should be Jews, he notes, “because it’s our responsibility to defend ourselves.”

(More Jeffrey Goldberg stories.)

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