{"id":32460,"date":"2012-12-18T12:00:43","date_gmt":"2012-12-18T18:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=32460"},"modified":"2012-12-18T10:55:31","modified_gmt":"2012-12-18T16:55:31","slug":"the-israeli-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=32460","title":{"rendered":"The Israeli Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the wake of the shootings in Connecticut last week, some – myself included – said it might be time to look at the response the Israelis took to repeated terrorist attacks on schools in the seventies; allowing teachers to carry their own, legally-obtained weapons in school.<\/p>\n

Lefties, armed with a small sheaf of convenient Google results and an Ezra Klein column that was, er, riddled with errors, responded “But no! \u00a0Gun laws in Israel are teh\u00a0<\/em>tight! \u00a0You are wrong!”<\/p>\n

The answer? \u00a0Somewhere in between and, as usual, a little to my side of the divide<\/a>\u00a0(and, as always, “distrust but verify Ezra Klein”),\u00a0according to this piece in “The Table” from Liel Leibowitz.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Leibowitz notes that most Israeli men, and not a few women, serve in the military, which involves carrying their\u00a0fully-automatic\u00a0<\/em>weapons around with them while on active duty, and keeping them at home with a load of ammunition while they’re in the reserves, ’til age 45 (without noting how little time soldiers spend training with handguns for the type of knife-range encounter most civilians can expect to encounter).<\/p>\n

And then:<\/p>\n

If we disregard the glut of guns facilitated by the Israel Defense Forces, we are left with strict-sounding laws that require anyone who wants a firearm license to register with the government and meet a list of seemingly stringent conditions.<\/p>\n

To receive a gun license, one technically needs to meet two sets of criteria. First, the basics: A gun owner must be a citizen or a permanent resident and speak some Hebrew. The person can\u2019t be a minor and can\u2019t have any physical or mental problems hindering him from operating a firearm. Second, one must show cause to carry a weapon, a privilege limited on paper to about a dozen categories of people whose work conditions are perilous enough to justify carrying a firearm.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that’s where American liberals leave it.<\/p>\n

But there is so, so, so much more:<\/p>\n

But take a closer look, and that second set becomes quite porous: Security guards, obviously, are permitted their guns, but so are men and women who work in the diamond industry, or who handle valuable goods or large sums of cash. Anyone who lives or works in an \u201centitled residency\u201d\u2014code for a high-risk area, meaning the settlements\u2014is permitted a weapon, no questions asked. Retired army officers can easily obtain a license, as can anyone who has inherited a gun from a friend or a relative. And sportsmen can easily get shotgun permits if they claim that they wish to use it to hunt pheasant or boar.<\/p>\n

The upshot: Anyone can come up with an excuse to legally own a gun.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that’s the part that lefties, in their frothing frenzy, missed.<\/p>\n

Now, here’s the interesting part. \u00a0Israel\u00a0has\u00a0<\/em>been tightening gun laws in recent years, adding restrictions and jacking up enforcement.<\/p>\n

The results? \u00a0They’re the sort of thing you’d predict – if you’re a conservative and a shooter:<\/p>\n

\u00a0The result was clear: In 2000, there were approximately 400,000 legally owned firearms in Israel, the majority of them handguns, and the number of illegal weapons stood at about 150,000. Ten years later, thanks largely to the new strictures, the ratio was reversed: 180,000 firearms were legally licensed, and more than 400,000 were illegally obtained, most of them assault rifles like the M-16 and the Galil, stolen from the Israel Defense Forces.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This, in fact, plays almost like a laboratory experiment; as a result of tightening access to guns by the law-abiding, the number of illegal guns rises.<\/p>\n

See also: \u00a0Chicago.<\/p>\n

Naturally, this led to an increase in the number of casualties, as it placed far mightier tools in the hands of criminals who were previously content to handle their affairs using the perfectly legal and readily available guns at their disposal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But wait – Israelis are permitted to buy less ammunition per year, right?<\/p>\n

Even if we disregard the relative ease of obtaining more bullets\u2014the army is always a handy source, as are shooting ranges, which sell as many bullets as one wants and rarely check at the door to see how many rounds each customer actually fired and how many were squirreled away\u2014talk of limiting ammunition remains unconvincing. Dylan Klebold, for example, committed most of his Columbine massacre using a TEC-9 handgun, which he fired a total of 55 times. Nearly any Israeli citizen could have fired the same number of bullets without breaking any law, and some\u2014from the homicidal Baruch Goldstein to Eden Natan-Zada, a soldier who shot up a bus full of Israeli Arabs\u2014did.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So appeals to Israeli gun law as a reason for the Jewish State’s relative tranquility are misplaced.<\/p>\n

So…what then?<\/p>\n

Read Leibowitz’ entire article – it’s very worth a read. \u00a0But to summarize, for the US, he notes three things:<\/p>\n