Thursday, March 18, 2010
Around Town Glorious Bastard: Bill Bernstein Talks Gun Control, Registration and Israel
Posted by Jim Ridley on Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 12:37 PM
In this week's Scene cover story, Jack Silverman profiles East Nashville gun dealer Bill Bernstein -- a devout Orthodox Jew with an Ivy League/Oxford education who's an exasperating foe to anti-gun activists, yet oddly endearing even to some of his ideological adversaries.
Above you'll find video of Bernstein and his friend, filmmaker Gandulf Hennig, shooting skeet with some sweet-ass artillery. After the jump, Silverman provides more quotes from Bernstein the online provocateur on a variety of topics.
On gun registration:
"We do not register guns in Tennessee. It's like buying a TV set."
[Applicants fill out a form and a fingerprint card, and he submits the form for a background check.]
"Currently you have to present a government-issue photo ID to buy a gun. The fingerprint card I'm sure predates that requirement. It's worthless. You're supposed to collect them and have them for a year. You staple it to the form. The ATF guys hate it because it's one more piece of paper to go through. In all the time they've had it, TBI has requested that card once, and when the got the card [the fingerprints] weren't legible. I'm not trained to do fingerprints. Those fingerprints aren't legible.
"What good does it do? It's demeaning to the customer to have to be fingerprinted for a legal product. It's the only one I'm aware that you have to do that for. It takes up dealers' forms. It costs money to print them up and mail them out. TBI mails them out. Get rid of it."
On gun control:
"Only law-abiding people follow the law. Those aren't the people you have to worry about. The people you have to worry about are the criminals. I know people that carry their guns wherever they go. That can be the post office, that can be restaurants, that can be schools. The feeling is, 'Look, it's under my control. It's hidden, it's concealed. Nobody knows that I have it. Nobody needs to know that I have it.' "
On the state of Israel:
"I'm not a Zionist. Let's define Zionist as someone who feels that the future of the Jewish people lies in the political state of Israel as currently constituted. I'm a religious Jew, so my view is that the state of Israel as currently constituted is not what was promised in the Bible. Not what our sages talked about. And at some point in the future we'll have a legitimate Jewish state with a king, and a priesthood and all that kind of stuff, and a temple. And when that happens, OK, fine, then we'll do it.
"But I'm sensitive to the fact that those are fellow Jews that live there, they're living there under fairly difficult conditions, subject to standards that other nations are not subjected to."
On the creation of a Palestinian state:
"There is no good solution to that problem. Any way they go with it, it's going to be terrible. The Israelis haven't done this well either. They can't give the West Bank back to Jordan. Jordan's already said they don't want it. They could have done it earlier, post-67, but chose not to. They tried creating a Palestinian state, and the first thing they did was elect Hamas and proceed to have a civil war with Hamas militants machine gunning Fatah militants in the streets. You can't work with a state like that."
Comments (15)
Showing 1-15 of 15
And at some point in the future we'll have a legitimate Jewish state with a king, and a priesthood and all that kind of stuff, and a temple.
This secular Jew, who for whatever criticisms she has of Israel still very much considers herself a Zionist, says screw that.
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I think you need to do a little fact checking. The last two guns i bought did not require a finger print card. One bought before the Legislature did away with the requirement had to have a thumb print, the other only required a Driver's License and Background Check.
The only guns I am aware of that require a finger print card are NFA items, that is a much longer process, and the cards are done by your local Sheriff's office and sent to the ATF.
The fingerprint cards are no longer used. Bill had a role in getting them eliminated. If he was speaking about when they WERE required, the writer should clarify.
This secular Jew, who for whatever criticisms she has of Israel still very much considers herself a Zionist, says screw that.
a few points:
criticizing Israel's politics is fair. Israelis do it everyday. Criticizing Israel because it is Jewish and represents the idea that Judaism lives and thrives in it's homeland is anti-Jew, not Zionism.
Support for Israel from the opinion held by Bill is derived from the fact that Jewish life must be protected and preserved. Today, there are 5,593,000 Jews living in the land, less than that slaughtered in Europe out of a total population of 7,411,000. Those Jewish lives must be protected from the barbarians living around them. To be a Zionist does not require choosing between a perspective of supporting Israel regardless of her secular politics or Bill's justification (supported by many Haredim in Israel). It means supporting and preserving the Jewish homeland and the Jews who live there by Divine right.
Secular support for Israel is paradoxical and actually baffling.
And at some point in the future we'll have a legitimate Jewish state with a king, and a priesthood and all that kind of stuff, and a temple.
These are the things Jews pray for everyday, at least three times a day. This is the reason Israel exists. The "secularist Zionist" Jew could establish a homeland anywhere. The religious Jew must have Israel. The "secularist Zionist" Jew believes that Israel is refuge for the Jews of the world fleeing anti-semitism. The religious Jew knows that Israel is a homeland of the oppressed Jew and the free Jew regardless of what type of government is currently in power. Whether or not the Israel of today will become the Israel that Bill (and all religious Jews)want it to become remains a decision for G-d to make. But I'll take Bill's reason to support Israel over the "secularist Zionist" any day.
Underneath the skin of the secular Zionist Jew is a soul, patiently waiting to off-load the folly which poses as truth and "reality".
I don't think some of you hoping that Israel return to how it was in the biblical days have really thought this all the way through. How would it work, to get a king and a priestly class? To get the priests, are we just going to round up everyone in the world whose last name is "Cohen" or "Levy" or some derivative thereof, and figure out whose best among them? And would we EVER agree on who should be king? Maybe God will come down and tell us how it needs to be done--but even then, there will still be groups of Orthodox who will claim that what we all believed God said was in fact blasphemous and false, and that their way is the only way of real Jews.
And the temple? We're going to bring back animal sacrifices? Really? Really?
There are other considerations too--there are so many different branches and practices, many based on simple geography--are Ashkenazi Jews going to claim a monopoly on the practices of the new temple and declare the Sephardim to be wrong, or vice versa? Are all of us wimmin-folk, especially the ones in the IDF who are probably far tougher than "aprpeh," just going to have to blissfully accept our new roles as chattel? And, based on what it says in the Torah, won't those of us who dissent from the new regime have to be exiled from Israel, or executed?
I don't think even most religious Jews want it that way, in the end. It's something that sounds nice in prayers, but they ultimately wouldn't want to give up their nice modern lifestyles to make it happen.
I greatly enjoyed Jack's profile of my old V.U. classmate Bernstein, who is making just as much use of his expertise in Pindar, Horace and the Fugitives/Agrarians as I am of mine. I remember him as the author of The Collected Letters of Allen Tate and Joey, the Newsboy (Directional Dakota Press, 1984), a groundbreaking assembly of epistolary instruction and customer-service complaint.
I wouldn't agree with a damned thing Bill espouses politically these days. That's exactly why I found this piece so refreshing. I was born in this town, and I have friends and relatives whose political views I find utterly repellent. But I love them just the same, and I try to maintain enough of a sense of humor to appreciate them all.
Warm wishes to you and yours, Bill.
oh Goldni,
you are so mistaken. Your lack of regard towards ancient Jewish belief and mainstream Jewish understanding is only surpassed by your projected negativity and feelings for your co-religionsts, your brothers and sisters who make it possible for you to be a Jew today. This is deeply regretful.
Your response is stereotypical anti-Jewism. really, women as chattel? Racial and cultural warfare? This is stuff which comes from your secular, liberal outlook. It isn't Jewish. Projecting secular beliefs onto Judaism and calling it Judaism is an disease of epidemic proportion at this time in history.
Are things perfect in the Jewish world? No. Is it the crisis that you seem to want it to be? Not even close.
Certainly you know that when Moshiach comes, there will be NO mis-understanding by Jew and Gentile alike as to the truth. Maybe Bill will invite you over too and explain it.
I have to wonder why my computer has been blocked from printing five of the six pages of the aforegoing. It appears on the monitor and may be read there, but no permanent copy is allowed to be made. I wonder why that is?
Mr. Bernstein needs to read HaShem's prophets. The current situation is exactly how He said the process would happen before Mashiach comes. As far as having a King in Israel, there will be only one King and that will be King Mashiach.
The fact that you can't, or won't, even answer my questions just proves that you really haven't completely thought this out either, aprpeh.
Personally, I hope that if God does come down from the mountain and dictate how it's going to be, that He proclaims that the Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews had it right the whole time, and that the entire white Ashkenazi Haredi movement was wrong.
that's a riot, I considered them answered to the extent possible. If you are asking me to play Eliyahu Ha'navi and point out to you who is closest inline to royalty and priesthood, you are asking in vain.
I suppose I will have to spell out the rest for you which is standard Jewish belief for those who do believe.
Yes to Moshiach (may he come speedily)Yes to the Temple. yes to whatever we are commanded by HaShem to do. Na'aseh V'Nishmah. If asked to bring offerings or reinstate them, then yes too. (this is subject to debate by legitimate Rabbinic authorities). That is what it means to be Orthodox Jewish.
that you choose one group of haredim over another (yes Sephardim and Mizrahi Jews also are "ultras" ie SHAS, Rav Ovadia, ) which have far more in common with each other than with your opinion of OUR religion is truly hilarious. Sephardic Haredim. BTW, your comments would be offensive to the da'ati Israelis,(National Religious)too.
Goldni - have a wonderful, meaningful and kosher Pesach. not trying to insult you - just to stimulate some thought. I will gratefully and happily greet you next year in Jerusalem, heading up to the Temple Mount, to the Beis haMikdash (may it be speedily built) to slaughter my Pesach lamb.
PS. If you need shmura matzah visit your local Chabad rabbi.
Well, thanks. But plain old Manischewitz brand matzah will work just fine for me--I try to be creative when cooking Passover dishes and I find it works better.
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