Very well stated article on the importance of armed civilians in Israel. Very interesting that it was published in Haaretz.
The Haaretz editorial on Friday (“Arming civilians is no solution,” Oct. 9) is rife with errors about basic values, tendentious and inaccurate.
The right of a person to defend himself from harm is an undisputed right; it is intertwined with the right to life. There’s no meaning to the right to life if we deny one’s right to defend it. I suggest that before entering a debate on whether it’s proper policy to provide weapons to civilians that we reexamine the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty.
The right to life is above all the other rights an individual has. The call to carry weapons is not a populist demand, but a demand by people who believe they have the right to defend themselves. In today’s reality it isn’t enough to imagine that “it can’t happen to me,” as is common among reckless drivers. On the contrary, we must adopt the approach that “it certainly could happen to me.” Each of us is liable to be the object of a terrorist attack.
It’s very inaccurate to say that, “In a few terror attacks the perpetrators were ‘neutralized’ by civilians carrying guns,” as the editorial stated. It hasn’t been just “a few attacks.” In dozens of instances since the terror on the home front began in 1975, attacks were repelled or nipped in the bud and numerous lives were saved because there was a resident with a gun license at the right place at the right time.
There is no comparison between the Israeli situation and that which prevails in the United States. In the U.S. the right to self-defense is enshrined in the Constitution, and as a result, so is the right to carry weapons. In the U.S. it’s very easy to get a gun; you can just go into a store and buy one.
by Uriel Lynn
