Are Israeli Teachers Really Armed?

Somewhere in an alternative reality lies the gunloon universe where armed people walk about happy, but it's not really Switzerland, or Israel, as this blog post points out.  The post is written by Ron Cantor, the executive pastor of Tiferet Yeshua congregation in Tel Aviv who also leads a ministry in Tel Aviv called Messiah’s Mandate. His comment about this picture is:

There is a picture going around the Internet that I have seen about a dozen times today that claims that Israeli teachers are packing heat. Well, are they? The answer is “NO.”

The author then goes onto point out the realities of guns in Israel.  His conclusion:

Israel’s successful gun ownership laws both serve to make sure upstanding, brave and mentally sound citizens have access to guns, and that those who present even a minor threat are prevented from possessing one. It would be a mistake to use Israel as the poster child for more weapons in the US, as our success here is much more connected to limiting weapons and enabling strategies such as gates, fences and armed guards (not armed teachers), to protect our children. Sorry to disappoint, but the truth is important.

Yet another gunloon myth bites the dust. In fact, there was hostility when someone tried to form an Israeli version of the NRA in 2008.

Yet it remains doubtful whether pro-gun advocacy will become as important in Israel as it is in the U.S. "The general trend to transplant American ideas to other countries is often not successful or very useful," said Gerald Steinberg, chairman of political studies at Bar Ilan University and an expert on American culture. The arguments put forward by the Israeli NRA are not convincing, he told Anglo File.

"We don't need a situation where hundreds of people shoot in all kinds of different directions in the case of a terror attack. That's the job of the police or the army," Steinberg said. He said that if more people carried guns the chances of more people getting hurt would be greater than the chance of neutralizing an attacker more quickly. "The last thing we want in Israel is an American gun culture," he added. "Israel has enough dangers, and making it easier for people on the street to carry guns is not what we need."