What we do 

The Temple Sinai Gun Violence Prevention Group (GVP Group) seeks to educate, engage and activate members of Temple Sinai to confront the gun violence epidemic in our community and nation.  Concerned Temple Sinai members organized the GVP Group in 2016 which is now in its 8th year of active engagement on this important national public health issue.

In Dec. 2019, the GVP Group received the “Irving J. Fain Social Justice Award” from the Commission on Social Action, Religious Action Center, Union of Reform Judaism. The URJ/RAC biennial award cited the GVP Group for its “outstanding and innovative program”, noting it served as an “inspiration to the greater Reform Jewish community, encouraging others to undertake similar inspiring initiatives.”

Accomplishments, 2016 – present

Since 2016, the GVP Group has organized over 20 educational programs and engaged in successful legislative advocacy on various GVP issues on the local, state and federal levels.  We have also joined GVP coalitions with both interfaith and national GVP organizations, and have sought effective ways to engage our fellow congregants – as well as temple students – on GVP.

Recent Zoom webinars include:

• A community forum co-organized with St. John’s Episcopal Church in Chevy Chase entitled “Finding Common Ground with Gun Owners on Gun Safety Policies: Can Maryland Lead the Way?”  View recording here.
• What Now?: Gun Violence Prevention Policy Options after “Bruen”, “The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act”, and the Results of the 2022 Mid-Term Elections. View recording here.
• An expert panel examined community violence intervention programs in a program entitled “Breaking The Cycle of Gun Violence Through Community Intervention: How to Define, Fund, Measure, and Sustain CVI”. View recording here.
• A panel of state officials and GVP advocates discussed the contents and status of important gun safety bills in the waning days of the 2022 MD and VA General Assemblies. Panel included Brian Frosh, then Attorney General of Maryland.

In December 2022, the GVP Group organized a special GVP Shabbat Service featuring Steve Dettelbach, Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and over a dozen area interfaith activists. We observed the 10th anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School gun massacre and also honored Tony Harris, former security guard at Temple Sinai, who was seriously wounded during an assault rifle attack in D.C. at the Edmund Burke School in April 2022.  View the recording of the service here.

At the GVP Shabbat Service, the GVP group also released a free 120-page digital “toolkit” published by the D.C. Area Interfaith Gun Violence Prevention Network, which our GVP group co-founded in 2017 with the GVP Ministry of the Washington National Cathedral.  The toolkit, “Turning Faith Into Action: An Interfaith Toolkit to Engage the Faith Community on Gun Violence Prevention”, is designed to engage more houses of worship on GVP and is the most comprehensive “how to” manual for congregations to be published in many years.

Please click on the “Activities and Accomplishments” at the bottom of this page for a Powerpoint presentation the GVP Group made to the Executive Committee of the Davis Center for Social Justice in February 2022 with further details on our work.

Upcoming Plans 

• The GVP group is helping to organize the first gun buyback event in upper Montgomery County, MD in spring 2024.  This program will be in partnership with the MoCo Offices of Sheriff and State’s Attorney, houses of worship in Germantown, and the Interfaith GVP Network. 
• We will continue to monitor and report on the status of the Supreme Court’s review of a significant gun rights case challenging the constitutionality of a federal prohibition on gun possession by individuals subject to domestic violence restraining orders, U.S. v. Rahimi.  See blog post on this topic by Steve Klitzman here.
• Support increased appropriations in FY 2024 and beyond for the historically underfunded Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (ATF).

Please read “Good and Bad News for Gun Safety in America: June 23 – 30, 2022” by Steve Klitzman and Sally Greenberg.

Contact Us

Email Steve Klitzman, Chair of the GVP group, or Robert Croog, Vice-Chair.