Media Shoutout: From Freebeacon, "Some in Jewish Community Advocate Bearing Arms After Pittsburgh."

An excerpt from the article features Shot Tec, LLC's founder Grant Schmidt:

"Grant Schmidt is responding to this hatred by taking a medical triage course in Israel, which he intends to bring back to the Philadelphia area. Schmidt is in the process of opening his own firearm studio.

Schmidt, who is not Orthodox, explained that his Jewish "community does not talk about guns. And that's dangerous." Despite he and others having concealed firearms in synagogue, the leadership of the synagogue "does not condone" gun ownership and will not discuss it "for fear of being seen as condoning it." Gun owners in his community, who carry to protect, are afraid of bringing up the issue for fear of provoking an official policy of outright prohibiting firearms.

That situation, Schmidt says, is untenable. "The trust in our synagogue leadership is gone after Pittsburgh." The attack made clear to him that "we need to be our own first responders." He noted that the Pittsburgh attacker used his position inside the synagogue and the presence of civilians inside to his advantage, wounding several police officers in the process. "The truth is that, as much as I am close to police in our area, they are second responders. We have a biblical directive to set watchmen, to be our brother's keeper, and when someone rises up to kill us, we have to rise up and kill them first."

In the past week, Schmidt has seen American Jews "turning to the Constitution, and turning to the Torah, which is what we should be doing in times of crisis." In practical terms, "that takes the form of concealed carry where it's legal. We have to be the change we want to see, we have to depend on ourselves."

For the full article, click here to see the article on the Freebeacon website.