In the wake of an anti-Semitic gunman’s assault-rifle attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue that left 11 people dead, a Colorado gun shop owner is contributing his own form of support — free guns, ammo, and firearms training to rabbis, according to a report.
“Let’s say there’s a fire in a synagogue. What do you grab? You grab a fire extinguisher,” Mel ‘Dragonman’ Bernstein told NBC affiliate KOAA-TV. “Let’s say somebody comes in and starts shooting everybody. What you going to grab? You grab your AR-15 or a rifle or a handgun.”
Bernstein told the outlet that he’s opening up his arsenal, Dragon Arms in Colorado Springs, to any rabbis interested in protecting their congregations from future active-shooter scenarios.
“I don’t really like what’s going on in the country, and I’m offering free AR-15 rifles with two magazines and a hundred bullets” to rabbis, he said.
Rabbis looking to fight fire with fire could also opt for a handgun, Bernstein said, adding that he’d include complimentary training.
Local reaction to the offer — which echoes President Trump’s claim that an armed guard could have stopped the slaughter, and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams’s call for off-duty cops to carry in their houses of worship — was reportedly mixed.
“I think he is absolutely generous in what he wants to do. I think he wants to help, and is very well-intentioned,” Jeff Ader, of a Colorado shul, told KOAA-TV. “[But] arming people is a preventative measure; it’s not part of the solution at all.”
A synagogue-going woman, who declined to be identified, told the outlet that many of her fellow congregants were already armed, and that she’d be fine with her rabbi carrying a handgun.
But she balked at the idea of a rabbi carrying an AR-15 during services — because the assault rifle is too bulky.