From: [C reuters] at [clari.net] (Reuter / Jeffrey Heller)
Newsgroups: clari.world.mideast.israel,clari.news.issues.guns,clari.news.features,clari.news.issues.misc
Subject: Israel loosens gun control laws
Organization: Copyright 1996 by Reuters
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 10:21:51 PST
Expires: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 8:30:14 PST
                                         
         JERUSALEM (Reuter) - Israel's interior minister has decided  
to allow more Jewish citizens to carry guns in a country where 
firearms already fight with cellular phones for pride of place 
on a man's belt. 
         Eli Suissa's approval of a loosening of gun control laws  
drew fire Wednesday from a former army chief, a retired national 
police commissioner and politicians. 
         ``There is already enough violence in Israeli society.  
Flooding the country with more weapons -- no good will come of 
it,'' former army chief Dan Shomron told Israel Radio. 
         Under the new regulations announced Tuesday by the Interior  
Ministry, civilians who served in combat units in the army will 
be entitled to carry guns and the minimum age for license 
holders will fall from 21 to 20. 
         Rules decided by the former Labor-led government last year  
limited gun ownership to Jewish settlers, Israelis working in 
the West Bank and Gaza, drivers of trucks carrying explosives, 
diamond and jewelry merchants and auxiliary police. 
         Defending the new regulations, Dubi Gazit, who headed a  
ministry committee that formulated the new policy, said: ``I 
think this means that guns will be in safe, trained hands.'' 
         Yigal Amir, who murdered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin last  
November, would have qualified under the old and new rules. He 
was licensed to carry a gun because he used to live on a Jewish 
settlement in the West Bank. He also served in a combat unit. 
         Left-wing legislator Yael Dayan, who chairs a parliamentary  
committee on women's rights, said more wives would face the 
prospect of being shot by their husbands. 
         ``Many times the threats and killings are carried out by  
licensed gun owners,'' Dayan, daughter of the late Israeli war 
hero Moshe Dayan, said. 
         Gazit said Israel's security situation was a contributing  
factor in deciding to loosen the laws. Official figures on gun 
ownership, last released in 1993, show that about 300,000 
Israeli Jews are licensed to bear arms. 
         Former national police chief Yaacov Turner said he was  
``very unhappy'' about the decision. 
         ``This will create a new situation in which guns will be  
placed in more hands and chances will grow they will reach 
criminals,'' he said.