Florida Jewish Community Drives up Gun Sales in Wake of Hamas Attacks and Antisemitism

David Kowalsky owns the Florida Gun Store in Hollywood, Florida. He says that supplies are flying off the shelves as fast as he can stock them. The attacks on Israel and the sharp rise in antisemitism all over the world have both American Jews and those who have immigrated from Israel eager to exercise their Second Amendment rights.

Kowalsky said:

Israeli and Orthodox Jews for the most part. Just wanting to be trained to protect their families and have a firearm at home or on their person. Since last Saturday, we have seen a tremendous public display of how prevalent anti-Semitism is and hate speech and how they want to rid the world of Jews.

As gun stores are seeing a rise in sales, shooting ranges are also seeing an uptick in training and sales. Pembroke Gun Range in Pembroke Park and Nexus Shooting in Davie both report a rise in business. The Florida Gun Store specializes in concealed carry and training. Many of the congregants at a local synagogue, including a group of women, have enrolled in the classes.

Endi Tennenhaus is a member of that synagogue and reports that most of the men in the congregation are beginning to arm themselves. But she thought it was equally important that women were able to defend themselves as well.

She said:

We said, ‘What about the women?’ We need to do the things we need to do to prepare. To stay safe and to be able to use a gun, God forbid if we ever should need one.

The attack by Hamas on October 7, which left 1,400 people dead, was the largest loss of Jewish lives since the Holocaust. And the subsequent rise in the incidents of antisemitism around the world is more than a good argument to be vigilant and armed. Two Swedish citizens, in Brussels, Belgium, to see a soccer game, were shot and killed recently by a gunman claiming to have ties to ISIS. In France, which has the world’s third-largest Jewish population, more than 24 arrests nationwide and more than 100 antisemitic incidents have been reported. And in a move that might prompt one to ask what decade we are living in, integration commissioner Guner Balci suggested reluctantly that for their safety, Jews in Berlin should hide any outward signs of their faith.

In the U.S., the sharp rise in antisemitic sentiment since the attacks can be easily found on college campuses. At Harvard University, thirty student organizations signed a letter placing blame for the conflict entirely on Israel. Micah Gritz is a senior at Tufts University and head of a Jewish student group on campus. He says that the atmosphere on campus has been “horrifying” for Jewish and Israeli students and that they are “incredibly scared.”  Pro-Palestinian protests have been held at Arizona State University and Indiana University. Even before the attack on Israel, an Ipsos poll showed that 57 percent of Jewish students said they witnessed or experienced antisemitism at school or in public.

The wide-open U.S. southern border is also an impetus for American Jewish communities to arm up. With approximately 1.7 million “gotaways,” those who evade Border Patrol, and roughly seven million people from all over the world who have crossed the border, including those from Middle East countries, and a fiscal year 2023 record total of 151 people on the FBI terror watch list encountered, it all leads to a monumental national security risk. Lora Reis is the director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at the Heritage Foundation. She also served as the Department of Homeland Security’s acting deputy chief of staff. She is concerned that lax immigration policy is “waking up” any possible terror sleeper cells already in the country. She said of the attacks in Israel and any potential for an attack on U.S. soil:

And already with the Hamas, pro-Hamas protests in the U.S. this week in New York City and elsewhere. That was a very public signal to say, ‘Yes, we’re here.’ And if the U.S. acts to support Israel in the Middle East then there will be a response here. They don’t need to fly in on their Mad Max devices like they did this past weekend in Israel. They’re already here.

If Jewish communities in Florida are arming themselves, it is a pretty good bet that it is happening in other parts of the U.S.