Remembering the North Valley Jewish Community Center Shooting

Mindy Finkelstein was in the right place at the right time – playing capture the flag on a sunny morning with five and six year old campers at the North Valley Jewish Community Center’s summer camp. On their way to the arts and crafts, though, it all went wrong.

That’s when Mindy was shot … along with three campers … by a self-proclaimed new-Nazi, out on parole and clinically insane. He got his weapon, a semi-automatic weapon, at a gun show.
“In an instant my campers went from running across the back grassy field to asking me if I had paint all over me. It was blood,” Mindy remembers. “It has been ten years and I can still remember every detail of that day and the feelings I had as a result.”

Mindy’s shooter was out on parole from the state of Washington. He crossed the state line into California, and he was criminally insane. He even tried to lock himself in a mental hospital and was denied entrance. He was so ill that, from what Mindy was told, the Aryan Nation kicked him out for being “a threat to their cause.” Yet, he was able to walk into a gun show and legally purchase his murder weapon.

“My opinion on gun legislation is simple,” Mindy explains. “It’s narrowed down to common sense and personal safety.

“Everyone makes the comparison that you have to have a license to drive a car but not to own a gun. For me it’s even less complicated than that. A car’s sole intent is to help get people from place to place. A sole purpose of a gun is to kill. So, making it harder to get a gun should be obvious.” Her shooter took advantage of the loophole in the sale of guns at gun shows. Private sellers at gun shows are not required to conduct Brady background checks on purchasers. “Bufford Furrow bought the gun he used against me without a background check or waiting period.”

Mindy became involved with the Brady Campaign after she spoke to nearly a million people at the Million Mom March in 2000. Mindy works with the San Fernando Chapter of the Brady Campaign, and recently organized the Victory over Violence 5K and 10K walk-a-thons to benefit the local Women against Gun Violence group. And she is a frequent speaker for schools, churches and congregrations, and civic groups, speaking out about gun violence and for common sense gun laws.

“At a recent Brady event, I met the father of one of the Virginia Tech victims who told me that I have a responsibility to speak for his daughter so that she could also lend her silenced voice to the cause. This is a responsibility that I don’t take lightly… and never will. I can’t bring back or replace the victims of gun violence in any way but what I can do is use my face and voice to show the truth behind gun violence. That’s why I continue to work with Brady to strengthen our country’s gun laws – especially to close the gun show loophole that threatened the life of me and my campers’ – and today still puts our communities at risk.”

CLICK HERE to tell your U.S. Representative to CLOSE THE GUN SHOW LOOPHOLE!