Gun License Applications Up 500% Since Arab Pogroms in Lod, Acre and Yafo

People are shocked at the restrictive gun regulations in Israel. Here’s some good news on that.

Here at the Muqata, we’re advocates for properly trained good citizens having guns. There have been a number of terror attacks in Israel that could have been stopped or limited to fewer victims if there had been a properly trained armed citizen in the area.

After the Pogroms in cities like Lod and Acco, the number of new gun license applications jumped by 500%, with 10,580 people filing for a permit.

Unfortunately, our new Minister of Public Security Omer Bar-Lev (Labor) doesn’t agree, and is attempting to bring back the restrictions that were loosened by Ohana and Erdan.

We don’t have numbers yet as to how many of the new applicants were approved or rejected.

Many of the Jewish citizens in cities such as Lod, Ramla, Yafo (Jaffa) and Acre (Acco), no longer trust their Arab neighbors, nor feel they can rely on the police to protect them. During Operation Guardians of the Walls, thousands of Arab citizens living in those cities attacked, injured and even murdered their Jewish neighbors. Synagogues were torched, Jewish homes were attacked, cars were burned, while in many cases police refused to enter the areas of the pogroms for reasons that have yet to be properly explained.

Yigal Yehoshua (56) was murdered by Arab stone throwers in the Lod pogrom, Destao Bisset (74) was killed in a hit and run in Ramla by a 16-year-old Arab on an electric bicycle, with no previous police record, and Avi Har-Even (84) was murdered in the Acre arson attack at the Efendi hotel. An Arab citizen was killed by Jews he was allegedly attacking during the pogroms, who then shot him in self-defense.

According to research by attorney Aharon Garber of the Kohelet Forum, the vast majority of the thousands of Arab rioters did not have prior police records and were for the most part seemingly normative citizens, including health-care workers in hospitals, academic college students, outstanding high school students and relatives of local Arab public figures, as per a report by Yair Krauss in Makor Rishon.