Target Practice

Hadara Graubart — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:03:57 +0000

Jewish teens on cross-country educational trips have a few must-see destinations: the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, civil rights hot spots down South, and, apparently, a shooting range in Salt Lake City, Utah. As part of a visit led by what the Salt Lake Tribune calls an “Atlanta-based youth education group” (some research concludes that it’s a very cool-sounding political road-trip organization called Etgar36), Jewish high school students heard from NRA rep Clark Aposhian (and his pistol) in what may have been an attempt to give them more respect for gun-rights advocates, but more likely furthered what the paper calls their “east coast liberal” sense that firearm enthusiasts are dumb rednecks. The lobbyist answered the students’ intelligent questions with evasions of logic, such as his explanation that Japan has fewer guns but more suicides than the United States (leading one to wonder what might happen if the Asian nation had more guns). The conversation did, at least, take a turn for the Talmudic: in response to Aposhian’s suggestion that “Why not?” was a sufficient reason for a private citizen to own and carry a concealed machine gun, one Pennsylvanian student said, “It’s a bull answer, but it’s still a true answer.”

Firearms Rights: Jewish High Schoolers Debate with Gun-Rights Champion [Salt Lake Tribune]

Tablet Magazine » Etgar36

Target Practice