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\u2026I didn\u2019t enjoy myself. I didn\u2019t say \u201cyes,\u201d when [my friend] Kedem asked me afterward, \u201cWasn\u2019t that fun?\u201d I didn\u2019t feel powerful or godly or safe, and no matter how dire the situation we Jews may be in, I still can\u2019t picture going through the process of buying a gun.<\/em><\/p>\n I thought of the literary term \u201cChekhov\u2019s Gun\u201d: \u201cOne must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn\u2019t going to go off,\u201d the playwright famously said. He was referring to props, to literary promises not kept, but I think of it literally: Don\u2019t have a gun unless you\u2019re planning to use it.<\/em><\/p>\n I do not want to use it.\u00a0Getting firearm training didn\u2019t make me want a gun, but something has changed within me. Or maybe it\u2019s just the world has changed \u2014\u00a0my\u00a0world had changed.<\/em><\/p>\n Since October 7, everything seems upside down: I\u2019ve seen so many of my liberal allies fail to stand with me like I stood with their causes (which I\u2019d thought were\u00a0our\u00a0causes). I\u2019ve lost friends and lost respect for people like my longtime family doctor, who signed an open letter from\u00a0Columbia University faculty\u00a0that contained\u00a0anti-Israel sentiment but failed to condemn Hamas. I can no longer distinguish between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. I find myself essentially fangirling far right-wingers I once eschewed, such as the nasally fast-talking Ben Shapiro, who opposes abortion but puts anti-Zionists in their place.<\/em><\/p>\n I do not know what it means to be a liberal Jew in America anymore. I don\u2019t know what it means to be against gun violence or against people who have guns or just against having playdates at houses with people who own guns \u2014 not when those people are all around me, when those are my people.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u2014 Amy Klein in Taking a Trip to the Firing Range Was Something I\u2019d Never Do Before October 7<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n