Pastor Who Lost Son To Gun Violence Invited To White House For President's Speech

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- The stories that moved President Barack Obama to tears on Tuesday were the tragic realities of dozens of families in the audience who lost loved ones.

They were invited to the White House for the president's historic announcement on new gun regulations.

One of those family members was Pastor Glen Grayson, whose son, Jeron, was an innocent bystander in a shooting that took his life near the campus of California University of Pennsylvania in 2011.

He spoke to KDKA's Kym Gable via video chat after the news conference in Washington, D.C.

"It was really overwhelming as an advocate against gun violence to see the president to take an executive action to not take away people's Second Amendment rights, but to get some sense of control and accountability," said Grayson.

It's a debate in which the lines are often clearly drawn.

But Sam Rosenberg, of INPAX Academy of Personal Protection, characterizes his position as a paradoxical one.

"The security professional in me, who deals with workplace violence and works with schools to prevent active shootings and things like that, gun access can be a problem," he says. "Not having universal background checks can be a problem from that perspective.

"However, the self-defense instructor in me, that wants to make sure people can protect themselves, is opposed to any measure that bypasses Congress wholesale and effectively starts to enact measures that I'm not convinced would actually have an impact on security and have an impact on keeping guns out of the hands of bad people," Rosenberg says.

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Many say the one commonality on both sides is fear. The fear of becoming a victim and the fear of one's rights being taken away.

"The reality is we have to make sure whatever the so-called sensible measures are, in fact, can have an impact on security," said Rosenberg.