Israel needs more than temporary
gun solution to stop “final” one
By David Codrea, November 21st 2014
JPFO writer contributor, © 2014.
Yitzhak Aharonovich
Israeli Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich is “temporarily easing” gun laws following an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue by Palestinian terrorists that left four rabbis and a policeman dead and seven wounded, The Wall Street Journal Law Blog reported Tuesday.
“In the coming hours, I will ease restrictions on carrying weapons,” Aharonovich announced on public radio.
“The scale and the targeting of worshipers in a synagogue rattled Israelis more deeply than any other attacks recently in the city, another WSJ report noted. “The assailants [were] armed with a rifle and butcher knives .... Police said they traded gunfire with the attackers for several minutes before killing them.”
The exact nature of the easing of restrictions has not been specified, but “the security minister suggested the rules would relax carrying restrictions for private security guards and off-duty army officers,” WSJ continued. That confirms the discussion is focusing on the “Only Ones,” and private citizens will still be relegated to either second-class status or else be forced to make a choice that could bring criminal charges. “In Israel, carrying a gun is not a right granted by the constitution, but rather a privilege given to those few who pass background checks and who can demonstrate a real need for possessing firearms.”
It’s not “granted” by the U.S. Constitution either, but that assumption reflects the sorry state “authorized journalists,” but of much of the public as well (including some gun owners). But the bottom line is, Israel is nowhere near the haven for armed citizens many gun owners imagine, much of it due to misreporting.
“In Israel, the right to private gun ownership is not guaranteed by law,” GunPolicy.org documents. While that website, a project of the Sydney School of Public Health, is decidedly anti-gun, it nonetheless provides instructive and useful compilations of gun laws from around the globe.
“In Israel, only licensed gun owners may lawfully acquire, possess or transfer a firearm or ammunition,” GPO explains. “Applicants for a gun owner’s licence in Israel are required to prove genuine reason to possess a firearm...”
Add registration requirements, ammunition limits, so-called “safe storage” edicts, stiff penalties for “unlawful possession” and the like, and Israel seems more like what gun-grabbers here want to set up in Everytown as “a good first step” until they start demanding more.
That the government of Israel evidently did not learn the lessons of 20th Century Europe is evident. 
A temporary solution that does not include the right of the people to keep and bear arms is no solution at all, and certainly no long-term deterrent to those who make clear their evil determination to impose a “final solution.”
“Never again” is just a hollow phrase if the means to ensure it are withheld from those the enemies of Israel would exterminate. Changing that can only begin when privileges are recognized as rights.
David Codrea is a field editor at GUNS Magazine, penning their monthly "Rights Watch" column. He provides regular reporting and commentary at Gun Rights Examiner and blogs at The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance. David Codrea's Archive page.
