Dana Feitler Professor, Gun Violence Prevention and Advocacy & Co-Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
~ RGVRC Affiliate Scholar ~
Joshua Horwitz, JD, is the Dana Feitler professor of the practice in gun violence prevention and advocacy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. He works to reduce gun violence by utilizing public health research and health equity analysis to build advocacy campaigns that meet critical opportunities in the policy development process. With over 30 years of experience, Horwitz is a key leader in firearm policy development and education. He and a small group of colleagues developed the extreme risk protection order (ERPO) policy, which is now law in 21 states and the District of Columbia. As a result, he is now the principal investigator of the national Johns Hopkins ERPO Resource Center at Johns Hopkins University, a Department of Justice-funded training and technical assistance hub that provides support to states implementing extreme risk protection orders. Horwitz has also developed many policy translation reports, including the newly released “Alcohol Misuse and Gun Violence: An Evidence-Based Approach for State Policy” and the original report from the Consortium for Risk-Based Firearm Policy, “Guns, Public Health, and Mental Illness: An Evidence-Based Approach,” which identified ERPOs as a needed policy tool. He has also testified before numerous state legislatures and the US Congress. Horwitz is the co-author of Guns, Democracy and the Insurrectionist Idea, published by the University of Michigan Press in 2009. He received his BA from the University of Michigan in 1985 and his JD from The George Washington University in 1988.