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By Lee Williams 

More than 260,000 Israelis have applied for firearm permits since the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks, according to The Times of Israel. 

While the Israeli government has loosened some permitting restrictions, the results are still far from the civil rights Americans enjoy under the Second Amendment. 

Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister, told the Times his office was approving 3,000 firearm permit applications per day, as opposed to around 100 per day before the terrorist attacks. 

“When the war started, we knew that we were right when we said that every person that has a weapon can save a life,” Ben Gvir said, according to the Times. “We need to enable as many people as possible to carry a weapon.”

Itamar Ben Gvir
Courtesy Itamar Ben Gvir Twitter

Previously, Israelis had to serve two years in the Israeli Defense Forces before they could apply for a firearm permit. Now, they can apply after serving one year in the IDF or other national service. In addition, those who work or live in a “qualified dangerous area” can also apply for a firearm permit. Israeli civilians who have no firearms training can also apply, although they will have to demonstrate proficiency before they receive a permit. 

Despite the loosened permitting process, armed Israelis must still comply with ammunition rules, use-of-force laws they call “open-fire procedures,” and carry restrictions that most of us would find intolerable. 

Takeaways 

This is not the first time we have seen armed civilians treated as an afterthought rather than as an additional component of a comprehensive national security strategy. 

We watched the Ukrainian army uncrating cases of AKs as quickly as possible and passing them out to mostly untrained civilians as Russian motorized rifle brigades were streaming across the border. Ukraine tried to change this by opening government-owned ranges to the public, but for many it was too little, too late.  

Ukraine citizen rifle gun firearm weapon AK
A young woman holds a weapon during a basic combat training for civilians in Ukraine. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Israel, Ukraine, England in the 1940s and countless other countries that have been attacked by their neighbors demonstrate the incredible forethought our Framers had when they wrote the Second Amendment and codified the right to keep and bear arms into law. We are truly fortunate. We became a nation of rifleman and riflewomen. Too many countries learned too late that there is no substitute for a gun culture, and that you simply cannot create a gun culture overnight, no matter how dire the threat. 

Any rational person would assume that given these recent events, even the most ardent anti-gunners would shift their positions and hold the Second Amendment sacrosanct. But they won’t, of course. The gun-ban industry’s antipathy toward the Second Amendment has nothing to do with the Amendment’s utility or the fact that it saves American lives and has won World Wars. Gun control has always been about control. To them, the lives lost in gun-free zones simply do not matter. 

Thomas Jefferson once said, “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.” The Biden-Harris has done more to infringe upon our Second Amendment rights than all other administrations combined, regardless of the real-world examples we see that prove the need for an armed, trained citizenry. 

Minister Ben Gvir was absolutely correct when he said, “every person that has a weapon can save a life.” It’s unfortunate that this was said in hindsight. That should never happen again, anywhere, because the ability to defend oneself is an inherent human right, which should transcend rules, regulations and borders. 

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49 COMMENTS

    • Let us remember that these permits are pistol permits.
      Israeli citizens are still not going to be allowed to buy a rifle and keep it in their house.
      They are allowing one pistol and 100 rounds of ammo.

      Any rifles permitted in the neighborhood will still be locked in an armory belonging to the self-defense forces.

      Whatever happened to those 10,000 rifles Biden was going to send to Israel?
      Wasn’t he worried they were going so he to be given to civilians and them back

  2. US citizens need 2A to protect us from our own gummint run amok. Israelis need guns to protect themselves from a threat our gummint won’t let their gummint fight effectively.

    • Israelis need guns to protect themselves from a threat our government AIDED… how many of Hamas’ rebels used ” trinkets ” left behind in our hasty abandonment of Afghanistan ?
      We will probably never be informed on the actual accounting to that question.

      • Don’t forget about the foreign aid I give the Palestinian Authority and Iran that they funnel to Hamas.

    • Friendly fire incidents are depressingly common in war. One estimate is that 25% of casualties in any given war are friendly fire.

      The US lost over a hundred men taking back an island from the japanese that the japanese had left. None of their soldiers were there.

      The simple minded see a vast Jewish led conspiracy behind these events.

      • USS Liberty wasn’t friendly fire, it was a false flag operation on purpose.

        Just like the Lavon Affair, the Stingray spying scandal- the list goes on and on with “our greatest ally”.

        Ben-Gvir did an interview where he defended spitting in churches.

        Let’s stop giving these people money to bomb hospitals and churches.

        • Your terrorists in gaza need to stop using those places as fighting positions.

          You don’t give a fuck about churches or hospitals. You just want dead jews.

      • Did you know on that on the 8th of June 1967 the state of Israel attacked the USS Liberty killing 36 US servicemen?
        Here’s another WACKY fact about the chosen people, in an event known as the Lavon affair. The Israeli government hired Jews in Israel to plant bombs in American owned civilian targets. Ain’t that crazy 😜
        Israel has one of the largest spying operations on us soil, beat out by only the Chinese and the Russians.
        Israel regularly breaks international law 🔥🔥🔥
        As of 2016 the US gives Israel $35 billion per year using YOUR taxpayer dollars 🤑🤑
        Now here’s a real SPICY 🥵 ONE our greatest ally tricked and deceived us in order to build nuclear weapons (Apollo affair) AINT THAT QUACKIN’ CRAZY

        • A self admitted palestinian American spewing what he calls ‘facts’ about Israel. No credibility at all.

          And why shouldn’t they have nukes? The world might be a better place in they sanitized the region.

    • And what the phuck does the USS Cole have to do with Antifa showing up in your neighborhood, dragging people out of cars then beating the crap out of them and chucking Molotov Cocktails at buildings?

      • Jews were behind BLM and the 2020 riots. It’s well documented and not disputed. The mainstream media is run by Jews. That’s well documented and not disputed. Israel did kill a bunch of US sailors to try to get the US to enter their war. This is well documented and not disputed.

        People don’t like Jews because they were behind BLM in 2029. People don’t like Jews because of transgender kids. People don’t like Jews because of porn. (What books did the Nazis burn?)

        • You need to go back in for a re-do of your lobotomy.
          This is well documented and not disputed.

    • Take a real good look. They are defending themselves and the are being prosecuted…not in a courtroom (yet) but on the world stage.

  7. From this article:

    “This is not the first time we have seen … civilians treated as an afterthought rather than as an additional component of a comprehensive national security strategy.”

    The masses are ALWAYS an afterthought in the minds of the Ruling Class. The primary concern of the Ruling Class is the Ruling Class. Anything that the Ruling Class advocates or does which benefits the Working Class is coincidence.

  8. Of course I am preaching to the choir here when I say that all responsible people should be armed for righteous self-defense. The trick is convincing everyone else of the same.

    As for WHY it can be so hard to persuade everyone else? That is a matter of relatively simple Psychology for the most part. Here is one example of the simple Psychology involved. A person who has embraced disarmament would have to admit that his/her position was wrong/destructive in order to abandon that position. Admitting to yourself that your position on something is wrong hurts your self-esteem. And if you are already suffering from low self-esteem, it is “better” to cling to your (incorrect) position than face facts and the attendant pain.

    • I think it has to do with people see themselves as enlightened. And firearms and the whole toxic masculinity is some kind of throw back to a day and age of self reliance or resilience, as if that is a bad thing.

      • Prolifrication of the dominant male was the 78% chance in the survival of that species.
        As R&D on veehickles should have never progressed beyond electric windshield wipers humanoids should have never progressed much beyond Homo Erectus.
        You all waz some bad mutha fckers back then.

    • uncommon…If you want to convince others about the value of self defense simply explain what happens to defenseless people who are cornered by a violent criminal, etc. Most criminals do not know how to kill humanely so dying at their hands can be a real batch.

      Waaaay on the other hand one’s decision whether or not to accept Gun Control is based on what the individual knows about Gun Control specifically the History of Gun Control. When gullible people know nothing about the atrocities inherent with Gun Control they fall for its false sense of security. I mean who else but ignorant people would march around begging lawmakers for an agenda History Confirms is Rooted in Racism and Genocide?
      https://youtube.com/watch?v=m-l7TO01-Sg&feature=shared

      • Condoleezza Rice spoke about her childhood; how her family & friends in the south were well armed, many times using their weapons to drive off those pesky democrats trying to cause chaos. Yes Condi does believe in the 2A and defending oneself (don’t tell that to the Fblie).

  9. The denial out there is palpable. “It can’t happen here,” is a common refrain, until “it” does happen, whether a home invasion, or an invasion across the border. People have normalcy bias, and believe the way things are, are the way things always were, and are the way things will be forever.

    Deadly ignorance, is what I call it.

    Or, they’ll say “the government will protect me!” Yeah, governments have been doing a bang-up job of that over the last few decades.

    Buy a firearm. Or two. Or three. Learn how to use it. Develop situational awareness. Start exercising. Take an interest in politics and current events.

    Your life depends on it.

    • I have a few for self protection. I also have a few, with mags and ammo, that I can pass out to neighbors who lack their own (not many of those, however) in case the neighborhood needs defending. Mosin Nagants and 7.62 x 52R were really cheap surplus a few years ago.

  12. I support 2A for all. At my Palestinian-American Orthodox Church, all the men carry.

    We believe in 2A for Palestinians! Unlike Biden, who does nothing to secure our border from the invasion of economic migrants- Hamas defends Palestinians at the border from ethnic cleansing.

    Palestinian-Americans are very socially conservative, and almost all Palestinian-American men own guns. Jews in America support gun control, porn, Hollywood, and big government.

    • You support rape.
      You support the slaughter of innocent, unarmed civilians.
      You support torture.
      From coast to coast, America shall one day be Palestiaian free.

    • It is not a question of wether you ‘believe in the 2A’. That is irrelevant. You pwning guns doesn’t mean anything either. There is no 2A in any kind of Palestinian constitution. That does not exist. The Second Amendment is purely an aspect of the American Constitution. A document for the governance of America. This is not for any other nation on this planet. NONE.

      The Russian people are governed by the Russian government. It’s no different anywhere else.

      A Palestinian-American is a Palestinian first and an American second. If you will assimilate and actually BE an American then do that and drop all this hyphenated nonsense.

      • “A Palestinian-American is a Palestinian first and an American second. If you will assimilate and actually BE an American then do that and drop all this hyphenated nonsense.”

        Sometimes Progressives get it right?
        “Former President Theodore Roosevelt in speaking to the largely Irish Catholic Knights of Columbus at Carnegie Hall on Columbus Day 1915, asserted that,
        ‘ There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all … The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic … There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.’ ”

        “President Woodrow Wilson regarded hyphenated Americans’ with suspicion, saying, ‘Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.’ “

        • We need to go back to teaching American citizenship in our schools. And all federal spending on education needs to stop. The constitution only requires education spending for the military. That is why the military academies were built. No money for civilian education period.

          In his finally addressed to the nation. President Eisenhower warned about the dangers of the federal government spending money on education. And how that federal spending ended up corrupting our education system.

  14. It is really astonishing just how in denial the jews are. The generation that fought the 1973 war was filled with holocaust survivors. They are all dead and gone now.

    And the generations that followed have not learned their own history. They cannot say that they do not have the tools to defend themselves. They just refused to use them.

    If the jews end up in the dust benefit history???
    It will be because they refused to fight back. They are really relying on others to do the fighting for them.

    This is the ultimate goal of a pacifist.
    Suicide

  15. @Chris T in KY
    “We need to go back to teaching American citizenship in our schools.”

    PerZackly.

  16. “Jews in America support gun control, porn, Hollywood, and big government.”

    The jews you are describing are not jews at all. They are atheists, they hate the Hebrew faith they were raised with. They only call themselves Jewish in order to get political points in some public debate.

    When you hear a Jewish person say they are an atheist you are now talking to a deceiver, a liar.

    • You don’t get to redefine what a Jew is.

      Sorry, but the people that anti-semites call “Jews” are the people responsible for gun control, porn, transgenderism, usury, Hollywood, and [infinite money for Israel to drop bombs on churches] government.

      Why do you think people don’t like Jews?

      • “You don’t get to redefine what a Jew is.”

        And you do? I don’t think so.

        “Why do you think people don’t like Jews?”

        Because people like you spread lies, rumors and hatred about the Jewish people — and too many people like you believe those lies.

        Aren’t you late for your New Hitler Youth meeting, Josef?

        • I’m not redefining what being Jewish is. If your mother was a Jew, you are a Jew.

          Chris T wanted to play word games and say the only observant Jews are Jews. Almost nobody accepts that definition- including most all Jews themselves.

          People don’t like Jews because of their behavior. They reject Jesus and push porn and gun control on us.

  18. Need legislation- ANY nation we give military aid to must add to their constitution (exactly): A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

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