On October 6th, 2023, a lot of things changed in Israel. Hamas initiated a brutal attack that didn’t just target the military. It targeted innocent men, women, and children. Hundreds were slaughtered at a music festival alone.
Guns have become far more common in Israel since the attack, and I suspect it’ll be a long time before people stop carrying about having a firearm handy, especially since we also saw armed resistance save a lot of lives that day.
But Israel and the United States are different nations in so many ways. Comparisons are going to happen, though, especially on the issue of guns, and this one misses something rather important.
What You Need to Know: In Israel, open carry of firearms reflects a focus on national defense rather than individual rights like America’s Second Amendment. While citizens may carry firearms, Israeli gun laws are stringent, requiring extensive IDF training and justifications for ownership.
-Israel’s unique security context, including threats from Hamas, Hezbollah, and neighboring tensions, drives its policies. Following the October 2023 Hamas attacks, gun license approvals surged dramatically. Unlike in the U.S., Israel’s armed citizenry is vetted and tied to collective defense rather than self-defense.
-For Americans, Israel’s model underscores a balance of gun control and readiness, shaped by constant security challenges.
That sort of underscores the entire piece. Basically, Israel’s security needs means mandatory military service, which in turn makes the populace training on using firearms to some degree or another. That need for security shapes Israel’s gun policy whereas the United States views gun ownership as a right and that shapes at least some of our policy, at least when we don’t have politicians trying to undermine it.
This is a valid view and I’m not really trying to undermine it here, but I think there’s a key point missing in this discussion, and that’s why the right to keep and bear arms was specifically preserved.
Not all rights got an amendment of its very own in the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment has several, which our Founding Fathers considered to be the first line of defense against tyranny, but the Second was, well, second.
It was considered so important that it was near the top of the list of preserving rights, and why? Look at the much-mangled militia clause, for a moment. “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state…”
Our Second Amendment rights are natural rights, rights given to us by our creator simply by virtue of being free men and women, but it was considered vital to preserve those rights not just because they’re natural rights but to preserve the security of this newly formed free nation.
In that regard, the purpose of us having guns and Israelis having them aren’t that different. What’s different is that Israel was an artifact of a time when people didn’t preserve natural rights quite to the extent that our Founding Fathers would have preferred. Israel has gun control, though less than they did on October 5th, 2023, that’s for sure. They have requirements that would never fly here.
While self-defense is a common talking point in defending gun rights, it’s not the totality of why it was specifically preserved in the first place.
No, that reason was to protect this nation. The fact that the Founding Fathers felt we might also have to defend it from the government itself makes no difference. It was, most definitely, about the security of this nation. Let’s not get it twisted.
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