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Rabbi Says European Jews Need Right to Bear Arms
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On January 14, 2015 @ 8:33 am In The Point | 18 Comments
gun by Karen Arnold
Muslim terrorists seem to have no trouble getting guns. It might be time for their victims to be able to defend themselves.
A prominent European rabbi has called on governments to relax gun-licensing legislation to allow Jews to carry firearms for self-defense, following last week’s deadly Paris attacks and amid rising anti-Semitism on the continent.
In a statement to Newsweek, which obtained a copy of the letter, Rabbi Margolin added that he believes that “as many people within the Jewish community as possible” should carry weapons.
His call, he says, is a result of the clear failure of European governments to protect their Jewish communities. The letter was sent less than a week after four shoppers were gunned down by ISIS terrorist Amedy Coulibaly at a kosher supermarket on Friday, in what was just the latest in a string of deadly attacks against European Jews by Muslim extremists.
French Jews have been particularly targeted by Islamist violence. In 2012 Al Qaeda-linked terrorist Mohammed Mera murdered three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse; that, along with several other anti-Semitic murders – including that of Ilan Halimi, who was kidnapped and tortured to death by a Muslim gang – has left France’s Jews feeling utterly abandoned by their government.
But other European Jewish communities have also been attacked in recent years, for example last year in Belgium, where an ISIS terrorist murdered four people at the Jewish museum in Brussels.
Rabbi Margolin cautioned that he was not calling for Jews to arm themselves illegally, but for governments to take steps to allow them to protect themselves within the law so that they can “feel protected.”
“Even just a gun. I’m not referring to tanks, it’s not about heavy weapons. It’s just that everyone would have something in their pocket.”
French gun laws haven’t worked out too well for anyone except Muslim terrorists.
There is no right to bear arms for the French, and to own a gun, you need a hunting or sporting license which needs to be repeatedly renewed and requires a psychological evaluation.
According to Gun Policy, a project by the University of Sydney, the punishment for illegally having a gun is a maximum of seven years in prison and a fine. In 2012, the French government estimated that there were at least 7.5 million guns legally in circulation.
If only the terrorists had followed the law.
Bloomberg reports that weapons designed for military use, such as the Kalashnikov AK series, have been illegally flooding France over the past few years, with state bodies recording double digit increases.
“The French black market for weapons has been inundated with eastern European war artillery and arms,” Philippe Capon, the head of UNSA police union, told Bloomberg. “They are everywhere in France.”
The number of illegal guns is thought to be at least twice the number of legal guns in the country. Weapons such as AK-47s can be bought for the equivalent of a few thousand dollars.
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