In his first media interview, Joe Horn talks Tuesday, July 1, 2008, in Houston.

Gabriel Falcon
AC360° Writer

Eight months after he pulled the trigger and days since a grand jury refused to indict him, Joe Horn is finally speaking out about the moments that changed his life, ended two other lives and touched off a furious debate on guns in America.

The opinions about the deadly incident reveal how deeply divided many people are over the killings. Here are just two from the 360° blog:

“Joe Horn is a murderer. He called 911, police were on the way, he was in no danger and he killed two people. I can’t see how he is justified.”

“Dear criminals, if you steal someone’s property, you will be stopped, lawfully in Texas. Now you know the risk.”

Much continues to be said about Horn’s motives and actions.

But he wants everyone to know he is not proud of what he did last November.

“For 61 years I was never a vigilante,” the retiree told Good Morning America. “Why would I be a vigilante over this incident?”

Horn also spoke to the Houston Chronicle, saying, “I know what a hero is, and that’s not me. I’m a human being that was in a situation that I’d never been in before, and I didn’t want to die.”

On 360° last night, radio host Lars Larson said Horn did the right thing: Keep reading

Ronald Holt, with his son Blair

Ronald Holt
Blair’s father

It’s been nearly a year since gun violence took my son.

He was shot while jumping in front of gun fire, protecting a friend who was in harm’s way. Blair was a smart, good and loving young man. This was supposed to be the year we picked out a University, talked about girlfriends and watched his talent take off.

But since he was killed May 10th of last year, his mother, Annette and I made our son a promise. Do everything we can to stop gun violence. We can’t do this alone. There are far too many kids getting killed in our communities.

Please help me by taking action against this senseless gun violence. Congressman Bobby Rush has sponsored House bill 2666, dubbed “Blair’s Bill” which works to have people register their gun purchases into a federal database, helping track down those guns involved in crimes.

Please log onto these websites to learn how to get involved.

www.Purposeoverpain.org

www.commonsensesaveslives.org

Myspace page

We can’t do this alone.
It was our son who lost his life to senseless gun violence, it could be yours tomorrow.

Sandra L. L. Bloom, co-author of 'Bearing Witness: Violence and Collective Responsibility' shares her thoughts on young people and violence.

Sandra Bloom, MD
Linda Rich, MA
Theodore J. Corbin, MD
John A Rich, MD, MPH
The Center for nonviolence and Social Justice
Drexel University School of Public Health

With the number of killings reported in the news, it can be easy to lose sight of all the young people in the inner city who make up the “walking wounded.” Violence is contagious. Community violence affects everyone in the community - and that means all of us. Many young people in the inner city have been victims of nonfatal violence - shot, stabbed or assaulted. Many others have witnessed violence against their friends or family, endured graphic, daily news reports about neighborhood violence or been treated as perpetrators, even when they are not.

Sometimes the trauma that these young people go through leaves them feeling raw and unsafe and even threatened by their own peers. We now know a great deal about the science of trauma. Over the past 20 years the scientific community has accumulated a vast store of knowledge about how the brain and the body are negatively affected by repetitive violence. In many ways, urban youth become like the traumatized veterans who return from Afghanistan and Iraq whose bodies and minds are stressed to the point where they cannot distinguish between real and imagined threat.

Keep reading

Watch CNN's David Mattingly report on Blair Holt, one of 28 Chicago school kids murdered last year.

David Mattingly
360° Correspondent

I first met Ronald Holt about a year ago. He had recently lost his young son Blair, to a wave of violence that was tearing through the streets of Chicago’s southside. Blair Holt was an innocent bystander caught in a gang-related shooting on a city bus. He was killed while pulling a classmate out of harm’s way. His death became a rallying point for neighborhoods demanding tighter gun laws, more economic opportunity for young people and better parenting.

Ronald Holt was one of the people leading the charge. Instead of becoming consumed by grief, he turned it into a weapon. He lobbied the state legislature hoping to restrict gun sales and he has since attended hundreds of public rallies and memorials. I returned to Chicago to find Holt at one of these rallies and I learned he has a new enemy…despair. The past year has produced very few victories.

Holt tells me he finds strength by talking to his departed son and imagines the teen encouraging him to keep going. He needs the pep talk often. So far this school year 24 students from Chicago Public Schools have been killed. That is a rate even faster than what we saw last year.

Program Note: Watch David Mattingly’s report Friday 10p et on 360°

A pro-gun advocate holds up a sign outside the Supreme Court in Washington, as the court heard arguments in an attempt to overturn the District of Columbia's firearms ban. The District of Columbia is asking the Supreme Court to preserve the capital's ban on handguns in a major case over the meaning of the Second Amendment's “right to keep and bear arms.

Kevin R.C. Gutzman
J.D., Ph.D.

Neither side has it right in the Second Amendment case currently before the Supreme Court.

District of Columbia v. Heller is an appeal from a federal appeals court’s decision that the D.C. gun control laws violate the Second Amendment. The circuit court’s decision reflected what I believe is the emerging scholarly consensus around the position that the Second Amendment involves an individual right to keep and bear arms.

Gun control advocates on one side and gun rights advocates on the other dispute this question. Since I am known as an originalist, I was asked to sign an amicus brief arguing that the Second Amendment bans laws like D.C.’s.  I refused to sign.

Does that mean that I do not believe that the Second Amendment reflected an individual right to keep and bear arms? No, it means that I do not believe that the District of Columbia is governed by the Second Amendment.

Why? Because the District of Columbia, insofar as it behaves as a state, is properly treated as a pseudo-state by the Supreme Court.

Keep reading