There are crowds at the Hollander shooting club in Kfar Saba, north of Tel Aviv. Customers come by the hundreds for the training necessary to obtain a gun license. The exercise, theoretical and practical lessons, lasts in one day. In a gymnasium, a group of nine men aged from their twenties to their sixties practice drawing, firing blanks, kneeling on the ground, changing magazines, in front of their instructor, a member of the Israeli special forces. “You must reload without taking your eyes off the enemy. You’re not Rambo yet, but with a little practice, you will be.”he asserts.
“I came to have my own gun. Since the attack on October 7, no one feels safe anymore. Israel will never be the same again. It’s transforming people, politics, the army… I live next to Arab territories. What Hamas did could happen to us. It’s not science fiction.”, worries Amir Erez, 49 years old. Father of three teenage girls, owner of a small software company, he spent 25,000 shekels – almost 6,000 euros – to receive all the training, as well as the pistol and ammunition. The goal, for him and his comrades, is to be able to hold on, while waiting for help to arrive in the event of an attack.
“A lot of people didn’t want guns in their homes. But that has changed. We will perhaps hire, to cope with the influx of new applications”, comments Riki Hollander, the club manager – a family affair. Roy, his son, 24, who has just finished his service as a shooting instructor in the army, believes that a weapon is useful: “It can slow down an attack. Terrorists cannot walk freely outside if they are under threat of fire. »
Precise limits
Since the massacre committed by Hamas, Israel has faced an unprecedented demand in its history: 180,500 new applications have been submitted to acquire a private weapon, according to the Ministry of National Security, headed by Jewish supremacist Itamar Ben Gvir. The trend was already on the rise: in 2021, there were 19,000 requests. They doubled in 2022, reaching 42,000. The consequence of the riots of May 2021, where mixed cities were the scene of intercommunal clashes between Jews and Palestinians of Israeli citizenship. In the streets of the country, reservists more readily display their assault rifles. Yet only 2% of Israelis legally own a gun.
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