hereA pair of gunmen reportedly from the West Bank opened fire at a bus stop on the outskirts of Jerusalem on Monday, killing six people and wounding six others before they were shot and killed by a soldier and several armed citizens who were at the scene when the attack took place.
In a press release issued a few hours after the first reports of the attack, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms chairman Alan Gottlieb said he wouldn’t be surprised if most mainstream media outlets downplay or quickly move on from the armed citizens’ response, “because it doesn’t conform to the narrative of civilian disarmament, and because it does confirm that the best way to respond to an immediate and unavoidable threat of grave bodily harm or death is to fight back with whatever degree of force is necessary,” including “using guns to stop a threat and protect innocent lives.”
“Following the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack in southern Israel, which claimed some 1,200 lives, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir pushed to expand firearms licenses for Israeli citizens,” Gottlieb recalled. “We thought it was the right decision, and Monday’s incident certainly vindicated that strategy.
“Reports say Hamas and other terrorist organizations are praising the attack,” Gottlieb noted. “This needs to be understood by critics of an armed citizenry. When people are being killed or wounded before your very eyes, calling 9-1-1 is not an option. Israel evidently understands this, and it is time for gun prohibitionists here in the United States to admit their crusade of citizen disarmament only creates more defenseless victims who can’t fight back.”
Just a few days ago a three-judge panel on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court decision that found Illinois’ gun ban on public transportation violated the Second Amendment rights of four individual plaintiffs, declaring that the state”may temporarily disarm its citizens as they travel in crowded and confined metal tubes unlike anything the Founders envisioned.”
While the Chicago Transit Authority and the state of Illinois may prohibit lawful concealed carry on public transportation, the state hasn’t temporarily disarmed criminals. As we’ve repeatedly noted here at Bearing Arms, violence on Chicago Transit Authority property isn’t unusual. The carry ban isn’t stopping violent offenders from carrying out attacks on a regular basis. It’s just preventing lawful gun owners from being able to fight back.
Carrying a gun doesn’t automatically mean that you’re going to get the drop on an assailant. The terrorists in Jerusalem managed to kill and injure twelve people before they were stopped, after all. How much worse would the attack have been, though, if there wasn’t an armed response already on scene?
The Seventh Circuit panel erred in its decision. While the Founders may not have been familiar with “crowded metal tubes”, they were well acquainted with crowded public spaces and distinctly chose not to make them gun-free zones. The appellate court flouted the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen, which held that “there is no historical basis for New York to effectively declare the island of Manhattan a “sensitive place” simply because it is crowded and protected generally by the New York City Police Department.”
That’s essentially what CTA property is; crowded and protected generally by the Chicago Police Department. The CTA doesn’t deploy metal detectors at every bus and train stop or station armed guards on every vehicle. Sure, there are tens of thousands of surveillance cameras that might help identify an offender after an attack has taken place, but that’s cold comfort to the victims of robberies, assaults, shootings, and stabbings that occur on CTA property.
Allowing for concealed carry won’t prevent every crime from taking place. But as we saw in Jerusalem today, it at least provides an opportunity to mitigate the damage done by those intent on causing harm and taking innocent lives. Illinois’ policy, which disarms citizens who depend on public transportation to get around long before and after they ride a bus or light rail, is dangerous… not to violent offenders, but to their targets.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their anti-gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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