Gun Control? Or Citizen Control?

By Moshe Feiglin

Far from the public eye this week, the Knesset Interior Committee held the most fundamental deliberation that I can remember on the subject of liberty.

On the surface, the topic was purely technical/practical. The State Comptroller’s report was presented to the committee. The report stated that thirteen people were murdered in 2012 by people carrying licensed firearms. The conclusion? Arms-bearing citizens are dangerous.

I showed how that completely contradicts the truth and how this demagoguery – enthusiastically taken advantage of by the State – will lead to more murders and much more servitude.

The request of the Internal Security Ministry was to require every arms-carrying citizen to undergo a psychological examination(!) every number of years, in addition to all sorts of astronomical fees and levies. In other words, the default position of the State is that its citizens are psychos who must prove their sanity once every few years.

This is the continuation of the terrible process that has already cut the number of licensed arms-bearers in Israel in half. This process expresses the approach that sees the State as sovereign and the nation as some sort of dangerous property against which the State must defend itself. In other words, I endanger you, you endanger me and the role of the State is to save us from each other – and itself from us both.

This is Stalin at his best, now implemented by the Ministry for Internal Security.

The truth, of course, is just the opposite. The sovereign is the nation. The State is the nation’s important and necessary tool. But just like fire, it can easily get out of control and burn its founders. Thus, the State is the danger and the nation must limit it and guard itself against it.

A number of years ago, the State of Israel decided to distribute thousands of automatic weapons to the PLO terror organization, which it ‘whitewashed’ by renaming it the ‘Palestinian Authority’. Over a thousand Israelis were murdered by those weapons. So who is endangering whom? Who demonstrates insanity and who exactly needs to be supervised?

The right to defend oneself is a basic human right. The State must deny the right to carry a firearm for self defense from those people who have already proven that they are unworthy to do so (a violent background and the like). But in Israel, the situation is reversed. A person has no natural right to carry a firearm for self defense. According to the State, it is not G-d Who gives him this basic human right to defend himself, but the State, itself. And the State really does not want its citizens to bear arms. And no – the State’s approach is not in order to safeguard its citizens’ security.

We are witnessing a process of weapons gathering from private citizens. The public is being abandoned to the wiles of the underworld or criminal and nationalistic elements from the Arab sector – which is overflowing with illegal weapons.

In more than 70% of terror attacks in which armed citizens were involved, those citizens were crucial in neutralizing the terrorist and ending the killing spree. (Dr. Shlomo Shapira, NRG)

“True,” you may say, “but the increase of murders carried out by licensed gun owners changes the picture.” So – we are told that thirteen murders with licensed weapons took place in 2012. What we are not told is that in twelve of those cases, the shooters were security guards. In other words, the weapons belonged to a private company. It is perfectly logical for security companies to make any rules that they wish. (Those who do not wish to undergo a psychological review before being accepted for the job are welcome to find work elsewhere.)

In other words, the Internal Security Ministry is mixing the security companies with private human rights. It is presenting us with completely distorted data and due to one, single incident, seeks to force all the private arms-bearers in Israel to undergo a humiliating psychological evaluation.

The result of this process is that the amount of weapons carried by the public will continue to decrease and in those 70% of terror or criminal attacks, the responsible citizens with guns will not be able to protect the public.

In years past, Police Chiefs Hefetz and Aharonishki called upon licensed gun-owners to carry their weapons with them. They even announced that they consider those arms-bearing citizens an integral part of the security lineup.

But the process of loss of liberty continues to unravel our society. In the interim, we are losing both our security and our liberty.