Prickly Jews

As an early Gen Xer closing in on 60 and a Jew, I've heard, "Never Again" my entire life. Jews in the West have invoked Never Again as a spell against persecution. Speaking as an American what I've seen is that most of my fellow Jewish Americans have thought as long as they remembered the horrors of the Holocaust and chanted Never Again, we'd be protected.

As we saw on October 7, 2023 that was a lie. Words are impotent unless you are willing to back them up with a willingness to fight.

Jews in the US are fortunate in that we have the right to keep and bear arms enshrined in the Constitution. Some states infringe upon that right, but even on those it exists and Jews there are not as helpless as those in most of the rest of the world.

The late gun writer Walt Rauch, who I was privileged to know, classed people into three basic groups:

• Sheep
• Wolves
• Prickly People

The sheep and wolves should be self-explanatory. By "Prickly People," Walt meant people who did not seek to hurt others but at the same time maintained the skill and arms necessary to defend themselves against the wolves. Think of a porcupine.

More recently Jordan Peterson has noted that,  "A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very, very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control."

Walt's Prickly People fall into the same category as Peterson's Dangerous Man.

Jews need to be Prickly People. We'll leave you alone, but mess around with us and you will find out to your detriment that doing so was a bad idea.

Becoming a Prickly Jew doesn't happen overnight and may require something of an attitude adjustment.

First, be proud of being a Jew. If someone tries to slur you as a Jew or Zionist, embrace it, don't shrink from that.

Develop skills that allow you to be dangerous to modern day Nazis and to take care of yourself and loved ones:

• Physical fitness.
• First aid and trauma care.
• Hand-to-hand fighting.
• Situational awareness.
• Marksmanship and firearms safety. (If you haven't already, check out my PDF ebook Guns for Jews.)

A political comment:

Elections have consequences. If you vote for candidates who restrict your right to self defense and bear arms, and who safeguard the people who attack Jews, you are perpetuating the problem.

Never Again is now. Become a Prickly Jew.