Benjamin Feldman’s wife of many years doesn’t like guns. During compulsory weapons training for the Israel Defense Forces 27 years ago, the future Mrs. Feldman made it clear that there would be no guns in her home.
But on a Tuesday night in June, her husband found himself at a shooting range with the Cleveland chapter of Lox and Loaded. The national firearms and self-defense training group is dedicated to giving Jewish people skills they may need in the face of rising anti-Semitism around the world.
Feldman (pseudonym) never expected to spend two hours per week honing his shooting skills. For more than 20 years, through courtship, marriage, moving to the United States, and rearing children, one thing had remained true: The Feldman home was a gun-free zone.
But Oct. 7, 2023, changed everything.
On that day, up to 7,000 Hamas terrorists carried out a carefully planned attack. They crossed the Gaza Strip’s 31-mile frontier with Israel in cars and trucks and on motorcycles and paragliders.
The terrorists killed 1,182 people, injured 4,000, and took 251 hostages. The victims came from 44 nations. The youngest to die was an unborn child, and the oldest was a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor who died in his safe room, according to a report by the All Party UK–Israel Parliamentary Group.
As the Feldmans watched the news reports coming out of Israel, their position on guns changed.
“My wife and I discussed it, and she asked me to purchase and train with a firearm, so that if need be, we would have one,” Feldman said.
Feldman, an Ohio lawyer, was reluctant to speak on the record. He and others interviewed requested to be identified by pseudonyms, out of fear of reprisal. He doesn’t want to make his family a target.
“The events that were unfolding around the world made my family feel unsafe,” he said.
Gayle Pearlstein, a Chicago-based firearms instructor, also felt unsafe. She said she was shocked by the attack on her people and felt burdened to do something tangible, with results more immediate than financial donations.
“It was an action,” Pearlstein said. “I needed to fix this so people not just where I live, but people all over the world and the community, would know that there are [self-defense] lessons. We are a place where you can learn to defend yourself and learn tactical awareness.”
She contacted a local Jewish community group and began teaching lessons for free. Eventually, the group had grown large enough that she needed help. So she reached out to other groups and shooting ranges, and Lox and Loaded was born.
As word spread, chapters were opened in other states, and membership continued to grow. Pearlstein said Lox and Loaded now has more than 1,300 members distributed through 56 chapters in 23 states.
The organization’s growth caught the attention of a national organization looking for a pro-Second Amendment cause to support.
Justin Davis, director of public affairs for the National Rifle Association (NRA), said that the association’s leadership was looking for a group to support and that Lox and Loaded seemed to be just the ticket.
He said CEO Doug Hamlin, expressing concern over the rise in anti-Semitism, asked the NRA leadership to be on the lookout for ways the gun group could help. Davis met Pearlstein at a gun industry trade show and knew they had found their cause. He said he expects the arrangement to be a long-term partnership.
“We partnered with Lox and Loaded to talk about the importance of firearm ownership, safety training, and understanding [the] patchwork of gun laws throughout this country,” Davis told The Epoch Times.
“Whether you’re Catholic, Baptist, or Jewish, you know you have to be looking out for the safety of your place of worship, and I’m glad Lox and Loaded is stepping up to do that.”
The FBI’s most recent data indicate that from 2021 to 2026, the highest number of religious hate crimes were committed against Jewish people, at 8,106 incidents. The second most targeted group was Islamic people, who were reported as victims of 1,144 crimes.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported a total of 8,873 anti-Semitic incidents, including assault, harassment, and vandalism, in 2023.
According to the league, this was a 140 percent increase over 2022 and the most recorded since the ADL began tracking data in 1979.
Greg Khitrov has seen the effect this has had on the Jewish community in New York.
Khitrov is a federally licensed gun dealer and a New York state and NRA-certified firearms instructor. He works in Yonkers and said that since the Oct. 7 attacks, business has been booming. For many of his new customers, buying a firearm—let alone using it—had been almost unthinkable before the attacks.
“Historically speaking, Jews, especially New York Jews, they’re very liberal, and they’re very much against firearms,” Khitrov told The Epoch Times. “So, for them, it became a battle with themselves.”
But Khitrov said that after protesters marched through New York City streets chanting “From the river to the sea,” neighbors who used to look askance at him became his customers. Most had little to no experience with firearms, he said.
“Buying a gun is not the end of the road; it’s only the beginning,” Khitrov said.
He hosts a Lox and Loaded chapter at his store because it provides the training and support new gun owners need.
The group provides a safe environment for people to ask anything, he said.
“We will absolutely work with them and make them feel comfortable,” Khitrov said.
He opened his chapter in March and currently has 60 members. He said chapters have since opened on Long Island and in Queens, Brooklyn, and Rockland County.
Jacob Cooper (pseudonym), an Ohio-based content creator, could be one of the new gun owners Khitrov talks about.
Speaking to The Epoch Times during a Lox and Loaded meeting, Cooper said he has lived in “sketchy” neighborhoods and never felt the need to arm himself. But with the rise of pro-Palestinian protests, it may be time to prepare, he said.
Cooper said that he hasn’t been directly threatened but that he sees levels of anti-Semitism he’s never seen before.
“Things are different now,” Cooper said.
Fifty-five percent of Jewish Americans reported experiencing anti-Semitism in the past year, according to national surveys conducted in March and June 2025 by the Jewish Federations and the ADL.
According to the groups’ report, 18 percent were victims of assault, experienced threats of physical attack, or experienced verbal harassment “due to their Jewish identity” in the preceding year, while 36 percent witnessed actual or threatened anti-Semitic violence.
The ADL reports that the May 21, 2025, murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington and the Dec. 16, 2025, stabbing of Elias Rosner in New York City were the first cases since 2019 in which Jewish people had been killed in the United States because of their ethnicity.
In another high-profile attack, Cody Balmer broke into Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s official residence and started a fire on April 13, 2025. Balmer reportedly told police that he set fire to the Governor’s Mansion because he wanted to draw attention to the war in Gaza. Balmer subsequently pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison.
These and other incidents are the reasons so many Jews are concerned that they may be targeted.
“The fact that antisemitic assaults have not decreased over two years since October 7, 2023, is a sobering reminder that this fight is far from over, and that the safety of Jewish communities depends on our collective willingness to meet this moment with urgency,” the ADL report reads.
But for some, the issue is even larger than threats to the Jewish community. They say Lox and Loaded’s mission can help any threatened community.
Group cofounder and CEO Ian Friedman said society’s approach to the safety and security of the Jewish community should be the same as approaches for other communities. Most cultures want the same things, he said.
“I think that a person should be concerned about the well-being of the Jewish community, just because it’s the right thing to do, to care about other folks, even if they may have different beliefs,” Friedman told The Epoch Times.
Gina Vertucci owns and operates Forza Defense Firearms Training in Orange, California. Her sister Donna Luce helps her teach classes on tactics and personal defense.
The sisters, who opened a Lox and Loaded chapter in March, take their roles as instructors for the group very seriously. They also take their faith very seriously. The women are devout Christians who say they are biblically mandated to do the work they are doing.
“I didn’t think twice about it,” Vertucci told The Epoch Times. “For me, it was a no-brainer.”
