The Israel Association of Security is formulating a proposal aimed to significantly reduce the number of firearms in security guards' possession. The reason for the move is the high number of criminal assaults, including murder, carried out by guards with arms intended for security work.
Police say 30 people were murdered with weapons intended for security purposes in the course of the last decade.
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There are approximately 45,000 armed security guards in Israel. The first step in the program will be estimating the guarded facilities to identify those that can be guarded effectively sans firearms.
Another clause in the proposal stipulates installing safe deposits in sites that are not guarded around the clock, so that security guards would deposit their weapons at the end of each shift.
The association's officials said the proposal was formulated regardless of recent instruction by Internal Security MinisterYitzhak Aharonovich, who demanded that firearms be collected from security guards once they finish their shift.
The officials added that as long as the minister's decree is not codified as a law ,it is effectively toothless as there are no means to implement it.