Washington, D.C., January 25, 2019 - With at least four dead and another critically injured, police in the Atlanta area are currently undergoing a manhunt for a suspected shooter in the area. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence released the following statement, expressing outrage at yet another mass shooting in America.
Kris Brown, president of the Brady Campaign, stated,
“In 2018, there were 340 mass shootings in the United States. 25 days into 2019, there have already been 21. Each one is just as devastating as the last, no matter if they take place at a school, a church, an office, or in a neighborhood shooting spree. And while the four individuals killed and one injured in this spree may have been targeted in separate shootings, it is certainly a mass shooting all the same. We can’t pick and choose which mass shootings get the public’s notice - if we want to end gun violence in America, we need to honor and equally value each and every victim. We must also understand that on average, 96 people are shot and killed every day in communities all across this country. Gun violence has shortened the life expectancy of Americans by nearly 2.5 years, and that of black Americans by more than 4 years.
“If we want to properly honor these victims, we need to know how the shooter secured his guns. While law enforcement’s focus must be on bringing the suspect to justice before anyone else is harmed, we implore them to fully investigate how he obtained his firearms after he has been safely apprehended. No community should have to face this sort of terror in their own backyards, and we must take steps to ensure that dangerous people are no longer able to obtain deadly weapons.”
While a suspect has been identified by local police, a recent joint investigation by BuzzFeed News and The Trace revealed how many shootings in the U.S. go unsolved. The odds of a shooting case being solved when the victim is a person of color is particularly low, as “When a black or Hispanic person is fatally shot, the likelihood that local detectives will catch the culprit is 35% — 18 percentage points fewer than when the victim is white.”
Brady has one powerful mission — to unite all Americans against gun violence. We work across Congress, the courts, and our communities with over 90 grassroots chapters, bringing together young and old, red and blue, and every shade of color to find common ground in common sense. In the spirit of our namesakes Jim and Sarah Brady, we have fought for over 45 years to take action, not sides, and we will not stop until this epidemic ends. It’s in our hands.
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