Sitting on a bus surrounded by Jews carrying rifles was once an exotic quirk of visiting Israel. But that may be changing.

Last month, the American National Rifle Association announced it was teaming up with Lox & Loaded, a national Jewish gun club, to help in the fight against antisemitism.

It’s one of several Jewish gun groups serving a growing cohort of newly gun curious American Jews since Oct. 7, 2023. Chicago’s Gayle Pearlstein, who launched Lox & Loaded in March 2025, says the group already has more than 1,000 members and 49 local chapters across the country. And that was before the partnership with the gun lobbying behemoth.

Bullets & Bagels membership, based in California, has skyrocketed by about 20%, to 1,000 members, and numerous interviews with gun range operators and firearms instructors across the U.S. revealed similar upticks in interest from Jewish community members.

Not everyone is as sanguine on the new turn of events.

As the number of Jews arriving at synagogues with a firearm on their hip or in a tallit bag increases, rabbis are reckoning with the place of firearms in their most intimate communal spaces, and trying to balance congregants’ - sometimes diametrically opposed - conceptions of safety. In September, the Secure Community Network - the organization that coordinates security for Jewish institutions across the US and Canada - urged synagogues to only allow congregants to carry weapons if they are part of an “organized, vetted, and well-regulated safety and security team.” Others who are wary of the intensifying situation cite well replicated data showing personal guns in the US are far more likely to be used in suicides, domestic violence, or accidents than in fending off an attacker, both for an owner and their family.

In Canada, Jewish schools and synagogues have been shot at in at least 8 separate incidents in the past three years. These incidents have sparked calls from some Jews in Canada to allow private security guards to carry firearms, something that is largely illegal under the federal government’s strict gun laws.

On Sunday, Not in Heaven sent our very own Avi Finegold to join his local Lox & Loaded chapter’s shmooze and shoot in Chicago to get a better understanding of this new phenomenon in North American Jewish life. We hear about what he learned and what this shifting relationship to guns means for our communities.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
• Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director)
• Music: Socalled

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