Invoking the spirit of the High Holy Days, Rabbi Mark Diamond gave a blast of the shofar to open a town hall-style meeting in Oakland last week on gun violence.
The rabbi at Oakland’s Conservative Temple Beth Abraham invited the 200 or so people gathered at First Congregational Church to join him in prayer.
“May the blast of the ram’s horn shatter our complacency about gun violence,” Diamond said. “May the sound of the ram’s horn awaken us to cleanse our cities and our hearts of hatred and violence.”
The meeting on Thursday night of last week, billed as a nonpartisan discussion on gun violence, was hosted by the Alameda County Bar Association’s Gun Violence Prevention Committee. It drew civic and religious leaders as well as law enforcement officials.
Speakers included state Sen. Don Perata (D-Alameda), state Assembly members Audie Bock (Green-Piedmont) and Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro), and representatives of the Oakland Coalition of Congregations.
Diamond called for peace, as well as safety from firearms.
“This season is known as the 10 days of repentance, an opportunity to scrutinize our lives and the health and well-being of our community,” he said. “As a Jew, I am bound by the greatest precept of my faith tradition: the mandate to save endangered lives.”
Firearms kill 30,000 Americans a year, Diamond said, including 12 times as many children in the United States as in 25 other industrialized nations combined. He cited last week’s shooting at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, as just the latest example of a national “epidemic of violence.”
Perata also lamented the assault on the teen prayer session in Texas. “I don’t want to pick up the paper again, like I did this morning, to read that three teenagers were killed in a church by a madman who had two handguns,” he said.
Perata, who is the principal author of a bill widely banning assault weapons, reported that after a 13-year effort, the bill was finally passed. The law takes effect on Jan. 1. The state senator is writing a new bill that would require handgun owners to renew their licenses regularly, as they do with automobile licenses, and pass firearm use and safety tests. He also favors mandatory insurance for gun owners that would cover accidental injury caused to others.
Corbett won passage of AB 295 this year, which regulates sales of firearms at gun shows. Next, she’s targeting “infrequent” sales. Gun dealers, she said, can make up to six weapon sales transactions a year without licensing, but under current law, each transaction may involve any number of guns.
Bock cast attention on the roots of gun violence, citing the media as one possible factor and violence in prisons as another. She said troubled “white males” deserve special attention.
“It’s crucial that people of conscience speak out against racism, against homophobia, against anti-Semitism and against all other manifestations of this violent bigotry,” she said.
Opponents of gun control also had the opportunity to speak during the open forum. Some warned that registration of handguns inevitably leads to firearm confiscation, rigid government control and fascism.
Speaker Vic Viviano won a standing ovation from a half-dozen audience members for cursing the “tyrants” and “shyster lawyers and judges” who would disarm the population. He said Hitler disarmed the Jews in Nazi Germany, making them more vulnerable to the army and local police.
Fred Wetherbee, a helicopter pilot in the National Guard, recalled the Jews who used handguns to defend themselves from Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto before their uprising was crushed. He added that Southern blacks and Koreans in South Central Los Angeles have used handguns to defend themselves against racists.
Responding to Wetherbee’s comments, Oakland Vice Mayor Henry Chang countered that very few people actually use firearms to successfully defend themselves. Chang authored a junk-gun ban in Oakland, and is now addressing ultra-compact, high-caliber weapons spawned by new technology.
Diamond agreed that most guns do not belong in public hands. “I cannot imagine the forefathers ever imagined that average citizens would need automatic weapons in their homes, he said.”
He urged people to examine the arguments of gun advocates critically.
On a lighter note, he continued, “Let us not be deceived by appearances. How ironic is it that a man who once played Moses on the big screen [National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston] now leads the fight against gun control. He may look like Moses, but his views are not our views, not the views of the faith community.”
Alameda County Assistant Sheriff Bob McGuinness gave Diamond his full support. “We heard your message loud and clear — and we agree with you and stand with you.
“Otherwise, the word ‘shalom’ will have no meaning.”