Gun ownership was very common.
Then the international community started squeezing Israel and the Israeli liberal Left Wing governments started restricting weapons to prevent negative PR incidents caused by response to Israelis protecting themselves from Palestinian provocations and attacks
The Israeli governments tried to replace Israeli's carrying weapons for self defense with well trained military police equipped to deal with the Pallywood provocations for media exploitation and it worked for a while. Until there is a genuine peace in the region , Israelis need be armed at the personal protection level in the event of another general invasion.
“Back in the good old days Israeli school girls in the territories carried uzi sub machine girls to school - literally.”
I recall several years ago where a few news articles had pictures of hot young Israeli women carrying M16’s while shopping.
Men or women, it does not matter, as carrying anything that spits lead is one hell of a deterrent.
Another sign liberalism is a mental disease. They are surrounded by enemies that want to kill them. So what do they do? They disarm the citizenry. This generation might learn from it, the next will forget.