When Operation Guardian of the Walls began last May, I was on my way to a wedding at one of the lovely vineyards of Judea and Samaria. During the drive, we heard the siren that announced missiles were on their way to central Israel. If dear friends of the bride hadn't been in the car with me, I might have turned around and headed home. I realized we were facing another intifada, and I was sure that on my way back would take me through rock and Molotov cocktail-throwers, and masked hordes. In my heart, I had only one regret – that I had no weapon with which to deter them and defend myself.
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The numbers show I'm not an exception. In an average year, some 10,000 requests for firearm licenses are filed with the Defense Ministry by private individuals, but last year, that number doubled, with almost 20,000 civilians applying for a firearm license. Approximately two-thirds of the applications were filed after Operation Guardian of the Walls, and a third in the month of June alone – right on the heels of the violent events of May. Last week, after the major riots in the Negev, there was a new wave of applications for firearm licenses.
The citizens of Israel are putting two and two together, seeing the helplessness and ineffectuality of the police, along with infuriating, false remarks that cite "violence by both sides." They see that the authorities in charge of public security can't cope, either ideologically or practically, with the wave of domestic vandalism and terrorism; residents of the mixed cities have been forced to watch their property bring burned and looted and their friends being beaten and murdered, while police dispatchers promise that "officers are on the way" and tell them "not to do anything." They have realized that if the police won't protect us, the government won't protect us, and the media is mostly trying to create false equivalence between the rioters and those who respond to the rioting – they are left to look out for themselves, their families, and their neighbors.
But this turning to personal weapons, however legitimate and understandable, is very bad news. It indicates that the basic contract between the government and its citizens – the contract under which citizens agree to give the state a monopoly on violence on the condition that it protect them and their rights – is being eaten away. If the only way of restoring quiet to the streets of mixed cities in times of rioting is not to call the police, but rather to organize armed civilian patrols to scare off the attackers, we have a problem. The people who patrol are saints and have probably saved lives, but this is not something to count on in the long term. A functioning country needs a functioning police force.
The jump in applications for firearms licenses only throws the issue into sharp relief: more and more citizens are feeling that at the moment of truth, there is no one who will protect them. If the police are meaningless and every civilian has a gun and can cock it and fire when needed, this is what's known as anarchy. This is the kind of thing whose beginning we can understand, but no one knows how they will end or who will pay the heaviest price.
I have no problem with the people who own guns. As I said, I might join them. But the trend itself should be keeping police officials and state leaders awake at night, because in the long term, public security is suffering strategic damage. If the government has one job – no matter what government is in power – it is precisely this. More than education and healthcare, more than passing a budget, more than preventing a fifth election, the government must work day and night to ensure that its citizens can sleep at night, even without a gun under the pillow.
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