Lee Williams, of the Second Amendment Foundation, is familiar with Israel’s strict laws on gun ownership that Americans wouldn’t recognize. Only semiauto pistols are legal to own there --- with a maximum of 50 rounds.
“Now they realize that if there had been more guns in the hands of good guys, maybe the loss of life wouldn't have been so horrific over there,” he says.
Even though Israel’s people are surrounded by enemies who want to kill them, and often do, semiauto pistols are the only firearm allowed and are only purchased with a hard-to-obtain permit. In private homes, you won't see AR-15 rifles, hunting rifles, or even shotguns.
Now, after more than 1,200 Jews were killed by Hamas soldiers armed with AK-47 rifles, the Israeli government plans to distribute 10,000 rifles to civilian teams in areas that border Gaza and the West Bank, according to The Times of Israel. According to the Times story, the National Security Ministry is distributing those firearms to security teams but not to individual Jews in a nation of 9 million people.
That means the survivors of the desert music festival, for example, have not been given the right to arm themselves. Similarly, unless they are part of a security team, the surviving festival guards who attempted to fight Hamas with pistols (pictured below) are not going to get in line to buy an AR-15 rifle.
In the kibbutz communities targeted by Hamas, Hamas attackers were repelled in some of them thanks to armed security teams that fought back, according to news reports. In others, where whole families were massacred, it is not clear if the families were unprotected or were guarded by a security team that was outnumbered and overwhelmed.
It may seem impossible to believe Israel restricts firearms in a nation with mandatory military service and surrounded by enemies, Williams says, but there is no constitution and no “right to bear arms” for its citizens. That is one reason Americans should be grateful for the U.S. Constitution and the Second Amendment, he says, and also why the Biden administration must be stopped from disarming us.
