Profile

Josh Horwitz, JD

Executive Director, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence

Bio

Joshua Horwitz, J.D., is the Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. He has spent nearly three decades working on gun violence prevention issues. Josh works to develop cutting-edge ideas and strategies for the gun violence prevention movement. For instance, in 2007, his research and advocacy were instrumental in enacting a first-of-its-kind microstamping law in California. This revolutionary technology allows law enforcement to trace guns from expended cartridge casings left at crime scenes. In 2009, through his book, Guns, Democracy and the Insurrectionist Idea, published by the University of Michigan Press, Josh was the first to show how the gun lobby’s “Second Amendment remedies” and insurrectionist philosophy are an attack on democracy, the rule of law, and other institutions that keep our country free. Thanks to Josh’s work, the concept of insurrectionism has now become mainstream. In 2013, Josh helped found the Consortium for Risk-Based Firearm Policy, a group of mental health and public health experts who examine the intersection of guns and mental health. The Consortium released a set of policy recommendations designed to promote policies that can prevent those at a heightened risk of violent behavior from possessing firearms. One of the Consortium’s recommendations was the basis for California’s first-in-the-nation Gun Violence Restraining Order law (GVRO), which passed in September 2014. Josh is a graduate of the University of Michigan and received his law degree from the George Washington University. He is a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he teaches public health advocacy and is a regular contributor at The Hill.