Israel isn't the worst place in the world when it comes to guns, but it's also not the best.
A year ago today, horrors unfolded that made me so glad to be an American and have the Second Amendment, and we saw both sides of things in Israel on that horrible day.
First, let's understand that guns are far from banned in Israel. A ton of people could get guns and did.
Less than a month before the October 7th attacks, Hamas decried Israelis carrying guns as "fascist."
But then the attack happened.
Hamas unleashed absolute Hell on the unsuspecting Israelis. They massacred innocent young adults at a music festival. They invaded kibbutzes and slaughtered anyone they could find. They murdered babies, for crying out loud.
At every turn, Hamas demonstrated what can happen when you're unable to defend yourself.
Yet even as things went down, some had the means to resist. They shot Hamas combatants in self-defense. Even CNN had to concede that at least some good guys with guns shot terrorists and defended their homes.
That day of the attack, I was at a friend's house in a different state. I was there to get his help on a project and we spent the rest of the weekend focusing on that. When I got home, I saw how bad things were.
If I hadn't supported the Second Amendment before, I sure as the Good Lord made Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stupid would have afterward.
Hamas launched that attack a year ago unprovoked. They'd tried to pretend that armed Israeli settlers were a problem, all the while planning on just this attack. They hoped to pressure the Israeli government to either disarm the people are take some other form of action while simultaneously planning on murdering thousands of innocent Israeli citizens.
They didn't like the idea of meeting armed resistance. They sought to sort of plow the road ahead of them.
And when they didn't meet armed resistance, they massacred almost everyone they saw. Those they didn't murder they kidnapped, many of whom were later killed.
When they did meet that resistance, though, things were different.
A good guy with a gun isn't going to be the automatic winner of an armed altercation. It's a weapon, not a magical talisman that wards off any and all evil. What it does, though, is give people a fighting chance.
A year ago today, far too few had the means to do so. They were slaughtered for no reason except an evil group of people didn't like them.
No one should be that defenseless. No one should be forced to wait to be killed simply because they were denied the means to protect themselves or defend their families.
Yet as terrible as October 7th was, we see similar things happening here in the United States. People in major cities and in anti-gun states often find themselves defenseless as the laws sold as the means to keep them safe leave them disarmed in the face of a home invader. Sometimes, all that's produced is terror for them and their families, but hoping for mercy seems like a pretty weak contingency plan.
It didn't work out for far too many Israelis that day. I wouldn't want to take a chance on it working out for me.