Five hundred to six hundred Israelis apply for a gun license every day in hopes of being prepared to defend themselves should Hamas attack again.

“Between October 7 and December 25,” according to The Times of Israel, “274,279 Israelis … filed for a handgun license.”

Contrast that period with the whole of 2022, when just “42,170 Israelis requested a handgun license.”

Breitbart News noted that private gun ownership was low in Israel at the time of the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack.

The BBC reported that Israeli gun ownership consisted of just “about 2% of the population.” In contrast, the findings of a study by Rutgers University’s New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center estimated that upwards of six in ten Americans own guns.

Israeli leaders began seeking ways to expedite gun licenses in January 2023 after Palestinian terrorist Alqam Khayri killed seven innocents as they walked out of a synagogue in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Neve Yaakov.

Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack, Israeli leaders pushed even harder to speed up the process by which Israelis could obtain guns. As a result, the number of gun license applications reached upwards of 3,000 a day in early December.

The Times of Israel quoted Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who said, “When the war started, we knew that we were right when we said that every place that has a weapon can save a life.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.