Israel's gun laws are strict. Despite the many security threats facing Israelis, and a horrific record of terror attacks, no Israeli can simply walk into a store and buy a weapon. While some soldiers take their weapons home when they go on leave, Israel’s Ministry of Interior only licenses guns to private individuals who can prove they work or live in dangerous areas, such as the West Bank, or work as security guards in specific sectors. Several levels of screening are involved and permit renewals are mandatory every three years.

Nonetheless, Israeli lawmakers have a great deal in common with their counterparts on Capitol Hill. Both are hostages of powerful, single-interest lobbies that represent small but vocal minorities. Like America’s National Rifle Association (NRA), Israel’s national religious settlers cynically corrupt the intentions and spirit of their founding fathers to justify their agenda and their very existence, and the actions of both groups have disastrous consequences for their fellow citizens.

“I’m not wild about the comparison,” Likud Party Knesset member Yehuda Glick, a leading settlement proponent, told Al-Monitor. “Settlement activity brings peace, whereas NRA activity leads to violence.”

Nonetheless, the NRA itself sought to hold up Israel as an example of the ills of gun control. “Israel had a whole lot of school shootings until they did one thing: They said, ‘We’re going to stop it,’ and they put armed security in every school,” NRA chief Wayne LaPierre said in 2012 after the deadliest school shooting in US history, in which 20 first-graders and six adults were murdered in Connecticut.