Statement on Henry Pratt Company Shooting

Washington, D.C., February 15, 2019 - This afternoon, multiple people were reportedly shot and killed with multiple people injured at the Henry Pratt Company manufacturing plant in Aurora, IL, with the full extent of their injuries still unknown. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence issued the following statement, expressing outrage at yet another mass shooting in America.

Kyleanne Hunter, VP, Programs at the Brady Center, said:

“Yesterday, the country collectively commemorated the one year anniversary of the shooting in Parkland, FL that galvanized a nation. Today, we are again seeing images of a mass shooting fill our television screens. 2019 has been a particularly horrendous year for mass shootings, with each one leaving more and more devastation in its wake. We must commit ourselves to eradicating this uniquely American epidemic from the roots by determining how the shooter obtained his guns - did he do so legally? Was he a prohibited purchaser? Was a background check conducted before he was sold a gun? Without knowing the answers to these questions, we cannot know how to ensure these tragedies come to an end at last.”

Reports from Aurora state that multiple people were killed, and that at least four City of Aurora police officers, as well as multiple civilians, have been taken to the hospital. Employees who escaped the building told reporters that they recognized the shooter, who has been taken into custody, as a coworker at the factory.

A 2018 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that there were 500 workplaces homicides in 2016, with shootings accounting for 394 of them - 79 percent. Last September, three high-profile workplace shootings took place over the course of 24 hours. In 2015, there were an average of seven gun homicides in the workplace every single week. And many states - including Illinois - currently have laws in place that prohibit employers from banning guns in employer-owned parking lots.

In 2017, the City of Chicago released a “Gun Trace Report,” tracking the thousands of crime guns recovered by the city’s police department and determining how they fell into the shooters’ hands. The report discovered that the overwhelming majority of these crime guns were purchased outside the city limits and brought into Chicago. It has since been a model for other cities and states to produce similar reports. The 2017 report can be found here: https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/mayor/Press%20Room/Press%20Releases/2017/October/GTR2017.pdf

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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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