UNTIL RECENTLY, the average Israeli was prohibited from owning a firearm.
There were some exceptions, the main one being that a person who wanted a license to own/carry a firearm had to be an active or reserve IDF officer.
However, since Israel's neighbors in Hamasland and the "Palestinian" areas insist on attacking Israelis, there is pressure to loosen the restriction on firearms.
THE CURRENT thinking, which is opposed by the Left, is that soldiers should take their weapons home with them.
The Left claims that terrorists will steal the guns and use them against Israelis.
But consider:
* The terrorists already have ready access to weapons - guns and knives and vehicles
* Back in the day - circa 1975 - soldiers routinely took their weapons with them off base. In point of fact, they were told to keep their weapons with them when they left base.
I well remember one of my brothers-in-law shelping his weapon - an Uzi - with him when he visited his parents 'Course his parents lived in Bet Shean, up against the border with Jordan and this was before the Israel-Jordan peace agreement.
(Even then, the only gun a civilian might be allowed to own was a "two-two" a .22 caliber).
What I fail to remember is the theft of soldiers' weapons. I'm sure some weapons were stolen or otherwise "lost," but that was the exception rather than the rule.
I don't know when soldiers stopped taking their weapons with them when they left the base, and I am not privy to WHY the rule apparently was changed.
I do know that the police are woefully under staffed to the point that they are next to useless to prevent a terrorist attack on an unarmed Israeli (Arab, Jew, or other).
I also know that when citizens are legally armed - as they can be in most U.S. jurisdictions - crime rates, including attacks on persons - drop. I am aware that there are far too many shootings in the U.S., but more than 90% of those shootings are by criminals with illegally obtained weapons.
I don't live in Israel now so I won't try to tell the government what to do about soldiers taking their weapons on leave - or anything else for that matter - but it seems to me returning to what used to be when I DID live in Israel might prove a deterrent to some terrorists; if not a deterrent to people willing to die for their brand of Islam, then at least an armed citizen might be able to send them on their to Allah before they can harm an Israeli (Arab, Jew, or other).
