Before the existence of the state of Israel ever since the diaspora Jews have lived in small areas of other people’s countries. Among American Jews this now typically means great grandparents who lived in shtetls or ghettos, segregated, isolated rural or urban areas in Europe. One of the major hazards of this situation was that occasionally a few Cossacks would get drunk, ride over to the nearest shtetl, rape a few women, maybe murder a man who protested rather than begging for his life and then ride off into the sunset, big fun… for the Cossacks.

It had to be inescapably clear to these Jews that there were dozens if not hundreds of them, able-bodied and sober, surely a match for 8 or 10 drunk Cossacks. It would have been easy, even for people not trained in arms, to kill them and bury them someplace, but it is obvious why they did not. If they had done so, all the Cossacks would have come to the shtetl fully armed for battle. They would have massacred every Jew in this shtetl and every other one within 100 versts. Defense was just not an option, not a survival trait. The women raped and the men murdered had to be seen as the price Jews paid for living, for surviving as a people. Since no Jew ever even remotely considered the possibility that without some major provocation someday the Cossacks would try to kill them all, it seemed like a reasonable if awful compromise.

Such a compromise must have taken a devastating and horrific psychological toll on the people forced to make it. Sooner or later someone among our traumatized ancestors had to make the following rationalization to justify this situation: “We are better than those people because they are violent and we are not. They handle weapons, and we do not.” In order to maintain self-respect people in such a condition had to explain it as the result of something that made them better than their oppressors. This was the notion that they voluntarily (rather than of necessity as was the actual case) eschewed the use of weapons of any sort because they understood that violence was evil while their tormentors did not. It was the key to survival, self-respect and eventually the shtetl mentality which American Jews, far removed from the shtetl, still carry with them despite the fact that it has long since lost its utility.

Eric King
2015
The Shtetl Mentality
[Interesting hypothesis. It is better than any I have been able to come up with.—Joe]

The Biden White House has for the most part worked hand-in-glove with gun control advocacy groups toward their shared goals of civilian disarmament. But a lawsuit against the government by survivors of the Sutherland Springs attack in 2017 is putting a strain on this harmonious relationship and causing embarrassment to all concerned. That’s because defending the suit has forced the government to admit inconvenient truths about the limitations of gun control. Now Biden & Company face a tough choice: Pony up more than $230 million or appeal the current judgment against the government and incur the wrath of its usual allies by truthfully admitting the top priority of gun controllers doesn’t really stop violent criminals.

…

It’s significant they had already argued in the case that even background check denials would not likely have stopped the perpetrator, nor could the Air Force had known from his commission of domestic violence that he had the potential to carry out a different type of attack.  Both those admissions essentially negate any further claims by the Biden Administration that firearm background checks have any essential role to play in public safety.

NRA-ILA
January 9, 2023
Biden DOJ Angers Gun Control Allies by Truthfully Admitting NICS Can’t Stop Violent Criminals
[It is such a pleasure to see the truth we have been shouting from the rooftops for decades finally putting the squeeze on the anti-gun people. With the Bruen case behind us the legal environment is essentially won with “just” a decade or two of mop-up left. As seen above the practical argument is becoming more and more one sided. The philosophical argument is easily won which may be why the anti-gun people almost never push that angle.—Joe]