Lox & Load, a Jewish gun club, slowly grows across America

 

By Andrea Widburg

I believe that history proves that all Jews should be legally armed and defensively dangerous. As law-abiding citizens and moral human beings, we should always be able to exercise our God-given right to self-defense. Fortunately, it seems that, slowly but steadily, more and more American Jews—a demographic that was traditionally anti-gun—are beginning to see things my way.

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I grew up in a very anti-gun home, something that mostly came from my mother. My parents had experienced World War II and the Israeli War of Independence firsthand. My dad was a combatant in both wars, first in the RAF and then in the Israel Defense Forces (“IDF”). Dad’s lesson was that a good rifle will defend you, and he eventually bought an old British Lee-Enfield rifle...which Mom promptly made him get rid of.

Why did she do that? Different life lessons.

My mother was a victim of World War II (she was interned in a Japanese concentration camp in Java) and an IDF cartographer in the Israeli War of Independence. Although she knew how to handle a rifle as part of her IDF basic training, she was never a combatant.

Maybe that was why Mom was one of those Jews who learned the wrong lesson about guns: Namely, that the problem is the gun, not the ideology that drives the person holding the gun (whether that ideology is basic criminality or race- or religion-driven hatred). Our family’s Democrat politics reinforced this attitude.

And goodness knows, we were not the only Jewish family to feel this way. Gun ownership data from 1972 to 2002 shows that Jews had an extremely low rate of gun ownership, with only 13% or so of Jewish households owning guns during that thirty-year period. In 2005, Jewish households were almost 75% less likely to have guns than non-Jewish households. Individual Jews weren’t much better, with only 10% of Jewish individuals owning guns, compared to 26% of non-Jews.

Traditionally, Jews have not only rejected guns for themselves, but they also haven’t wanted others to have guns. In a 2018 survey, 70% said it was more important to have gun control compared to 25% who valued supporting American gun rights. Incidentally, the percentage of pro-gun-control Jews in that poll aligned almost perfectly with Jewish allegiance to the Democrat party.

However...

Beginning in 2018, some Jews began to figure out that, even in America, people want to kill them, an understanding triggered by murderous synagogue attacks in Pittsburgh (2018), Poway (2019), and, most recently, Colleyville (2025). They looked at the landscape—growing numbers of radical Muslims, growing antisemitism on American campuses and in the heart of the Democrat party, and increasingly overt antisemitism from American blacks (long the most antisemitic group in America after Muslims)—and realized that, as the NRA always said, when seconds count, the police are minutes away.

However, even as late as 2022, before the events of October 7, 2023, in Israel, which triggered rabid, genocidal antisemitism on college campuses and in cities across America, most American Jews (along with the Democrat party) continued to press for ever more extreme gun control.

What finally seems to have changed that foolish dynamic is October 7 and the overt explosion of American antisemitism that followed. Finally, Jews are arming themselves, so much so that a Jewish gun club called Lox & Loaded (a very clever pun) is growing fast across America:

A Jewish American firearms club, founded in the wake of the October 7 massacre and the rise in antisemitism, is growing in popularity, with over 30 chapters across the United States. It’s poised to go international.

Created in Cleveland, Ohio, the Lox & Loaded gun club has more than 1,000 members and aspires to establish a chapter in every US state. A spokesperson said that the objective was reasonable, given the immense interest in the organization. 

So far, Lox & Loaded hasn’t made it to South Carolina, but I live in hope. I sincerely believe that a free people, to remain free, must see each individual bristle like a porcupine. Those cute little beasties leave others alone, but they make it clear that they will brook no attacks. (Same goes for skunks, another adorable animal you don’t want to mess with.)

For more on Jews and guns, check out my review of Guns & Moses and, even better, check out the actual movie. And if you’re Jewish and don’t live in a leftist bastion like New York or San Francisco, where they make it almost impossible to exercise your right to bear arms, look into getting a gun and taking a gun safety class. (You should always do both if you’ve never handled a gun before.)

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/12/lox_load_a_jewish_gun_club_slowly_grows_across_america.html