I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish community. In my experience in that community, more people were politically conservative than liberal, for reasons of morality, but quite a few were liberals.
Gun control was mostly a non-issue. It was just not a gun culture. Hunting is, as posters noted early in the thread, against Jewish law and not really terribly respected in Jewish culture.
The quote Pilman posted does demonstrate how Jewish legal thought tends to operate--by applying older situations to new ones. I think we can all spot the breakdown in that logic as applied to guns--a dog can attack without human agency. A gun can't.
I remember my parents were a little torn on a AWB when it first rolled around. They thought it was probably not a great idea for all the usual reasons--2nd am., easy to get around, demonizing particular models instead of actual criminals--but they also couldn't comprehend why anyone would want the guns they saw pictured in the NYT.
Definitely the hoocaust plays into this a little. Ime, Jews tend to get nervous when the gov't starts randomly choosing constitutional provisions to ignore.
But they were very supportive of non-Jews going deer-hunting. They rcognizd the need for herd management, and saw that as a proper function of non-Jews. But, most kinds of straight recreation lik shooting and gun hobbies are frowned upong in the most Orthodox communities. But everyone was cool with Israeli settlers carrying, or young Hassidim in Brooklyn carrying to protect the community.
My brother's Orthodox father-in-law is teaching rudimentary shotgunning to his teenage son because he thinks he needs an outlet of some kind, and shooting is a fairly harmless one.
I guess what I'm getting at is that while among the Orthodox there isn't strong support for rtkba, there isn't strong opportion either, and there is a recognition that there are appropriate situations where guns ar desirable, but that this is not a major part of the culture.
Last time I stopped by my parents house, I happened to have my Benelli in the trunk of my car. My brother and sister-in-law wanted to see it, and were fairly impressed by it. My parents were also interested. It was not a "guns are evil, how dare you" situation at all, more a "hm, kinda' neat, don't know much about it, but I'm fascinated, even though I would *nver* distract from my mission by becoming a serious hobbyist." I think my guns shock them far less than almost anything else about my life.
