Three Years After Las Vegas Mass Shooting Brady Urges Attention to Survivor Support, Public Health

Washington, D.C., October 1, 2020 – Today, three years after the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, Brady urges attention to the long-term effects of gun violence on survivors and their communities. In 2020, the death toll from this event increased, as a 49-year-old woman died on September 17 from complications resulting from the wounds she sustained in the shooting.

As our nation battles the dual epidemics of coronavirus and gun violence this year, it is essential to remember that gun violence is a public health emergency, taxing our nation’s health care system and affecting survivors for years to come.

Brady President Kris Brown shared:

“All of our thoughts are with the Las Vegas community and the victims of this shooting, and their families and loved ones. We know that the toll of gun violence continues well after physical wounds heal. In fact, we have seen that borne out over the past three years. Not only has the death toll from this shooting increased, as recently as last month, as victims who were injured by the shooter die from complications arising from their injuries, but ongoing legal cases continue to wind through the courts. The effects of this shooting have not concluded, not for survivors and not for the Las Vegas community.

On this day, we must remember that supporting survivors includes supporting them and their families long after shootings end. Gun violence is a public health crisis that costs our economy an estimated $221 billion every year - $169 billion stems from impacts on victims’ quality of life. We will continue to mark this day for years to come, even as wounds heal and lawsuits conclude. But we can never lose sight of the fact that these victims will bear these scars, both physical and emotional, for the rest of their lives. Supporting survivors means ensuring that we attend to those wounds and doing all in our power to ensure these kinds of massacres, and every day gun violence, comes to an end in this country.”

Brady Nevada co-president and Las Vegas Shooting Survivor Heather Sallan shared:

“On October 1, 2017 I put on my cowboy boots and went to the Route 91 country music festival in Las Vegas. These boots would carry me as I ran for my life that night. No American should ever have to experience what I have seen and heard. The day I woke up after that shooting, I realized I couldn’t just sit around hoping someone else will make a change. I had to do my part to make a difference and decided to start a Brady chapter in my city. Since 2017, Nevada has expanded background checks, enacted an extreme risk law, passed a safe storage law, and banned bump stocks. 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.”

About the October 1, Mass Shooting in Las Vegas:

On October 1, 2017, a shooter opened fire on a crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, firing over 1,000 rounds of ammunition from his room in the Mandalay Bay Hotel. The shooting lasted approximately 10 minutes, killing 58 people and injuring 411. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

In the three years since, that death toll has increased, as two additional victims who were injured that night died from their injuries. In total, 60 people died from gun violence in this attack and 867 were injured during the attack, 411 by gunfire.

About Brady’s Lawsuit Against Slide Fire Solutions, LP:

On October 10, 2017, Brady and Las Vegas law firm Eglet Prince filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of victims of the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival against Slide Fire Solutions, LP and the sellers, manufacturers and marketers of "bump stock" devices.

The suit asks the defendants to pay for the costs associated with counseling and other treatment for festival goers who suffered emotional distress as a result of the shooting. The lawsuit also asks the court to award punitive damages. The lawsuit alleges that such damages are appropriate for defendants who provided a product that turned a semi-automatic gun into the functional equivalent of a machine gun, thereby evading longstanding federal law.

The lawsuit asserts that Slide Fire Solutions, LP was negligent in developing and marketing "bump stocks" to the general public without any reasonable restrictions, thereby subverting federal law that has highly regulated machine guns for over 80 years. The complaint goes on to allege that the damage caused to the plaintiffs, "resulted from the military-style arsenal that the defendants manufactured, marketed, and sold to the public, without any reasonable measures or safeguards."