John,
My name is Heather Sallan and I am a survivor of the October 1 Las Vegas Country music festival mass shooting. Today, on the two-year anniversary of the shooting, I am wearing the boots that I wore that night when I ran for my life so I can honor the 58 people killed who will never have the opportunity to put on a pair of cowboy boots again.
It took me two months after the shooting to be able to put them on again. I wear them when I am asked to be a voice, because these boots are a part of my story of the most horrific night of my life.
No American should ever have to see what I have seen and heard. 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 of the ground and off of the structures and things around me. No one attending a concert or an event of any kind should know exactly how to describe the whistle sound of a bullet so close to their left ear their hair moves. But I can.
Screaming, hysteria, blood, terror, calling my family while running to say goodbye, but instead telling my son I think I’m okay. What is that noise, he asked me? It is machine gun fire. And then I hung up. Other families never heard back from their loved ones. Or never even got a call.
58 people were killed. More than 850 were injured from the shooting or the ensuing chaos. It was the single deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
The day I woke up after that shooting, I realized I can’t just sit around hoping someone else will make a change. I had to do my part to make a difference.
I decided to start a Brady chapter in my city, and today I’m co-president of Brady Nevada. Brady is a great organization that has a long history of fighting to end gun violence. This year in Nevada alone, Brady members have helped expand background checks, enact an extreme risk law, pass a safe storage law, ban bump stocks, and more.
For me, October 1 is a reminder that even on the hardest days, we can each have the courage to put on our boots and get to work.
Sincerely,
Heather Sallan,
Las Vegas Shooting Survivor
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