Disarming a Country
In Mark Smith’s book Israel Disarmed: What the October 7 attack teaches Americans about the right to bear arms, he gives us some examples which should be a wake up call in the debate over 2nd Amendment protected rights.
According to Smith, only about 1.5% of the Israeli population were allowed to own firearms before October 7, 2023. (John Lott says it is 3%.) The political belief in Israel was that they could count on their police force and their military to protect them.
However, in Smith’s book he highlights the contrast between two Israeli kibbutz.
In the October 7th attacks, one Israeli kibbutz had no defensive firearms and about 750 residents. 60 residents were killed, 17 were taken as hostages.
Another Israeli kibbutz had about 1500 residents which included about a dozen men with firearms. Not one resident of the second kibbutz was killed as the roughly dozen armed defenders held off the Jihadis.
In addition, on October 7th, 364 people were killed and 40 hostages were taken at the Supernova Sukkot Gathering, an open-air music festival. 17 police officers were killed and Smith does not know if the police officers were armed. The festival was a “gun free zone.”
A few days after the attack, Israel’s Second Amendment-lacking citizenry was granted new ‘permissions’. Israel’s Minister of National Security went on “X” and wrote: “Today I directed the Firearms Licensing Division to go on an emergency operation, in order to allow as many citizens as possible to arm themselves.”
Basically, regulations were loosened - not lifted - in order for more Israelis to arm themselves. Included in that ‘loosened’ regulations was that citizens were allowed to purchase 100 bullets (the former limit was 50).
On October 23rd 2023, SCOPE wrote about firearm regulations in Israel. It’s worth rereading. Here is the link. S.C.O.P.E. Shooters Committee On Political Education - Lessons From Israel
Israel learned the hard way that when the police are minutes or hours away, help is only 1,500 feet per second away.
Smith also uses the example that on November 13th, 2015, a mass shooting and hostage taking took place in Paris at the Bataclan Theatre. A concert was attended by 1,500 people. The attackers killed 90 and another 416 people were injured. Seven of the attackers were also killed. Eight police officers who were at the Bataclan off-duty were all unarmed.
France has very restrictive gun laws in spite of a national history of gun ownership.
And speaking of France’s history, Wikipedia has this to say: “The Farcy law (Loi Farcy) of 1885…liberalized gun ownership and production. This regime continued until 1939, when weapons were divided into categories and ownership of military caliber weapons was strictly regulated, almost prohibited.”
1939! Great timing to restrict military caliber weapons! The Nazi’s invaded France in May of 1940 and it took just over six weeks for France to surrender. (Wikipedia failed to mention that little tidbit!)
It’s worth noting that every school shooting occurs in a gun free zone.
It’s good to remember these lessons when voting.
