NRA Chief Points to Israel as Model for His Vision, Israelis Disagree (VIDEO)
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Gerald Steinberg Israel and Wayne LaPierre Israel Gun Control Israel NRA Newtown massacre NRA Meet the Press Reuven Berko Sandy Hook Elementary Wayne LaPierre Yakov Amit Yigal Palmor guns
Screen shot of Wayne LaPierre from NBC's "Meet the Press." Photo: NBC/Youtube
NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre has been ruffling some feathers lately, including those of Israeli security experts. LaPierre has been speaking publicly since a mass-murderer killed 27 people in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14th, deflecting blame away from gun control and suggesting other possible causes for the massacre. He’s also been offering up his own prescription for averting school shootings: armed guards. On Sunday he attempted to use Israel as an example of how the model works.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” LaPierre said: “Israel had a whole lot of school shootings, until they did one thing. They said we’re going to stop it and they put armed security in every school and they have not had a problem since then.”
Yigal Palmor, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, told the New York Daily News that the situation in Israel was “fundamentally different” from that in the United States.
“We didn’t have a series of school shootings, and they had nothing to do with the issue at hand in the United States. We had to deal with terrorism,” Palmor told the New York Daily News.
“What removed the danger was not the armed guards but an overall anti-terror policy and anti-terror operations which brought street terrorism down to nearly zero over a number of years,” he said. “It would be better not to drag Israel into what is an internal American discussion,” he added.
“There is no comparison between maniacs with psychological problems opening fire at random to kill innocent people and trained terrorists trying to murder Israeli children,” Reuven Berko , a retired Israeli Army colonel and senior police officer, told the Daily News.
In fact, in recent years restrictions on gun ownership in Israel have been tightened.“Israeli citizens are not allowed to carry guns unless they are serving in the army or working in security-related jobs that require them to use a weapon,” said Berko.
“The attempt to compare the two tragedies is absurd,” said Prof. Gerald Steinberg of Bar-Ilan University. “Palestinian terror attacks like one one at Maalot — the goal of which was to use the children as hostages in order to free other terrorists — are totally different from crimes committed by deranged people with guns.”
Israel has strict firearms licensing and supervision. Licenses must be renewed regularly and cannot be issued to people with a history of mental problems or a criminal background. “In a country where hundreds of thousands of people carry firearms, it is essential to manage the training, licensing and authorization of those who wish to be armed,” Yakov Amit, head of the firearms licensing department of the Public Security Ministry, told the New York Daily News.
