Israeli civilians rush to receive firearms training after Hamas attack

Civilian gun ownership has sharply increased across the country since Hamas terrorists massacred hundreds of innocent people on October 7.

Gilad Mastey, right, has upgraded from a pistol to an automatic weapon for his job as a forest ranger in Israel’s south. Picture: Yoni Bashan

Civilian gun ownership has sharply increased in Israel since Hamas terrorists massacred hundreds of innocent people in the country’s south, prompting a run on weapons and a surge in licence appli­cations ahead of military prep­arations for a war in Gaza.

Shooting ranges are reporting a staggering increase in patronage, with Israelis queuing up to renew firearms licences or receive training on how to own and operate their first weapon.

“I have a son, and that’s it, I want to be safe,” said Simona, who decided on Monday she wanted a weapon. By Tuesday she was at the National Olympic Shooting Centre in the city of Herzliya receiving instructions. “I’m living in the centre of Israel but still I’m very scared,” she said.

Yehoram Gaon, an Israeli singer as renowned in Israel as John Farnham is in Australia, made a similar point. The 83-year-old said he’d been a gun owner for some time but decided now was the time to purchase more bullets.

Yehoram Gaon, 83, is stocking up on bullets. Picture: Yoni Bashan.

“There’s no one place in Israel that’s safe after what happened in the south,” Gaon said. “Once I believed that there are Hamas and there are Daesh (Islamic State), but now I don’t know who is ISIS and who is just an innocent Palestinian. That’s what happened in my mind when I saw what happened in the south.”

The shooting centre has received a four-fold increase in pat­ronage in recent days, according to Ori Raz-Comitao, an instructor, who said people were there to practise free shooting, renew licences or to buy weapons as first-timers. He said the numbers would be even higher if reservists hadn’t been deployed to the frontlines.

People lining up at the National Olympic Shooting Centre in Herzliya.

A week ago, the country’s nat­ional security ministry reported that it had received nearly 8000 requests from people wishing to carry a firearm in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks. That was after regulations for gun ownership had begun to be eased in some high-risk communities.

Last week, in the city of Sderot, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir held a press conference to announce that every resident would be permitted to obtain a gun licence. The city lies close to the Gaza border and was the site of mass murders on October 7.

“We will be ensuring that we are prepared, with guns on every street corner,” Mr Ben-Gvir said.

“We will be ensuring that as many Israeli citizens as possible will be able to get personal firearms, and we will continue to make certain that the process for this is straightforward.”

Doctors confirmed the increase, saying the number of ­people who were requesting the medical certificates required to obtain a gun licence had jumped by an order of magnitude.

Family physician Hayley Joffe said she had gone from writing about 10 certificates each year to roughly 50 in the past few days.

Ordi Sharf said she was writing 10 a day compared with about three a month previously.

“They’re terrified,” said Dr Joffe of people making inquiries.

“They feel like when push comes to shove, there’s no one there to take care of you.”

The concern of these doctors, and others, is that firearms will shortly proliferate in this otherwise tightly regulated society, leading to a surplus of weapons in the hands of people not always entirely fit to hold them.

“They (civilians) have the right to protect themselves,” said Dr Sharf, “but we are worried about unsupervised use of weapons, ­people who are not skilled to use these weapons and who can be violent, especially in extreme circumstances.”

Israelis train at the National Olympic Shooting Centre. Picture: Yoni Bashan

While most people are said to be opting for pistols, others are upgrading to heavier weaponry.

Gilad Mastey, a ranger with the Jewish National Fund, used to carry just a pistol but has now moved to a fully automatic weapon in light of the recent terrorist attacks. The organisation man­ages forestry around Israel.

Mr Mastey said “reality has changed” since the attacks, and a pistol was no longer adequate for his patrols in forested areas bordering Palestinian villages.

“If you are with a pistol and a terrorist with a Kalashnikov came to you, you have to fight it with equal forces,” he said.