John,

Seven years ago today, I stood in my cowboy boots at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas, NV. In an instant, the music festival turned into a war zone when a gunman opened fire, shooting hundreds of bullets in mere minutes. I still have the cowboy boots I wore that night as I ran from the horror that 60 people would not escape. Every year I wear those same boots on this day to honor those who will not have the opportunity to wear a pair again.

My name is Heather Sallan and I am a Brady Nevada activist and gun violence survivor. It took me two months to put my cowboy boots on again after the shooting. And now, I put on my cowboy boots when I'm asked to be a voice against senseless violence — because these boots are part of the story of the most horrific night of my life.

No one should ever have to go through what I went through on that night. No one should have to endure the terror-filled experience of rapid machine-gun fire while hearing and watching bullets hitting people around them ... people instead of me ... and the distinctive pinging of bullets ricocheting off the ground and off the structures and things around me.

Seven years later, and Congress has still failed to ban assault weapons like the one used in Las Vegas. I'm asking 5,000 to raise their voices today to call for change and finally get these weapons of war off the street:

I'm lucky. I made it out alive. Other families never heard from their loved ones. This was and remains the single deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The shooter used an assault weapon with a bump stock and killed 60 people. More than 850 were injured from the shooting and the chaos that accompanied it.

The day I woke up after that shooting, I realized I couldn’t just sit around hoping someone else would make a change. I decided right then and there I would fight to make a difference. I decided to start a Brady chapter in my city — because of its long history of fighting to end gun violence.

Since then, in Nevada alone, Brady members have helped expand background checks, enact an extreme risk law, pass a safe storage law, and ban bump stocks. We're also making progress nationally, with Congress passing the most consequential gun safety legislation in decades after the horrific shooting in Uvalde.

I know you're as committed as I am to a future free from gun violence. The best way to prevent the next Las Vegas or Uvalde is by banning assault weapons, so today I'm asking you to join me in that fight, and I'm hoping to get 5,000 signatures from people just like you and me. Please, will you sign Brady's petition to demand Congress ban assault weapons?

Sincerely,

Heather Sallan
Gun Violence Survivor
Brady Nevada Activist