By JACK SLOCUM
On the morning of Oct. 1, 2017, Dan Savage, 32 at the time, woke up alongside his girlfriend, Jamie, in their Las Vegas hotel room, ready to start nursing his hangover. After a couple of ‘hair of the dog’ shots and a dip in the pool, Savage and his 15 friends were back in party mode. The group was spending the weekend in Las Vegas, attending the three-day Route 91 Harvest music festival. At first, the weekend was an exciting haze of music, drinking, and partying. The first few days of the trip was one of the best getaways of Savage’s life. However, what started out as a fun-loving time at a concert quickly turned into a terrifying fight for survival.
On the third and final night of the festival, at 10:05 p.m., Savage and his friends were forced to endure the deadliest mass shooting in US history. From the 32nd floor of a Vegas hotel, Stephen Paddock, 64, had opened machine gun fire on the 22,000 concertgoers, killing 60 people and injuring over 500 before turning the gun on himself.
“It is incredibly hard to go from ‘I’m partying hard’ to ‘I’m in the middle of a one sided combat zone, I’m in a killbox and people are being murdered all around me,” says Savage, communicating through social media.
According to Savage, the first few shots didn’t alarm most of the crowd, he suspected the sound was simply firecrackers. It wasn’t until the next volley of gunfire that Savage recognized what was taking place. Savage develops video games for a living, including the war game Call of Duty, so he was able to recognize gunfire before others around him.
“It was frustrating that no one else in my area knew what was going on,” says Savage. “I instantly recognized the cracking in the air from the bullets going supersonic speed. That means we were directly in the cone of fire.”
Savage, without hesitation, tackled his girlfriend to the ground, along with two other friends he was next to.
“I was shielding her body from bullets with my own.”
While covering their bodies with his, he began screaming at them to stay down and protect their head.
“They (his friends) then started to get what was going on, but not fully ‘click’ you know?” Savage said. “For all they know their drunk friend Dan just tackled them to the ground and was screaming in their ear.”
Savage waited for the reload, which seemed like forever due to Paddock’s extended magazines, and began running away while holding the hands of the friends he had been shielding. They navigated through lifeless bodies, jumped gates, fences, and broke down walls, making their own extraction.
“It was terrifying seeing the contorted, twisted faces of my friends in the absolute worst moment of their life,” says Savage. “That haunts me in my nightmares.”
Exponential Rise
Savage’s harrowing story is one that echoes thousands of other mass shooting survivors throughout the U.S. The five deadliest mass shootings in the US all took place between 2007-2017, including the Virginia Tech and Pulse Nightclub massacres.
Mass shootings are defined as firearm incidents that cause 4 or more casualties, excluding the perpetrator(s).
The 1999 Columbine Massacre, which resulted in 39 casualties, was the incident that brought mass shootings in to America’s spotlight.
The number of mass shootings in the U.S. has increased exponentially since the Columbine tragedy, with 610 mass shootings taking place in 2020, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The Gun Violence Archive also reports there have been over 190 mass shootings in 2021 so far, which is more than one mass shooting per day in America.
Some theories as to why this increase is taking place include slack gun control laws and U.S. health care systems’ failure to properly address mental illness. Paddock, for example, was thought by his physician to have severe bipolar disorder, and was prescribed the anti-anxiety medication Valium. At the same time, Paddock legally owned 47 firearms, 23 of which were found in his Vegas hotel room.
Speculation for the spike in mass shootings also traces back to the ‘gun control loophole’, which refers to private sellers not having to run background checks on gun purchasers.
Legislative Action Needed
The Biden Administration has recently addressed the gun control issue. On April 29, during his joint session of congress, President Joe Biden pushed for proper gun control, referring to the issue as an “epidemic.”
“We need more Senate Republicans to join with the overwhelming majority of their Democratic colleagues,” said Biden. “Close loopholes and require background checks to purchase a gun.”
Biden also discussed the banning of “ghost guns,” firearm assembly kits that do not require purchasers to go through federal background checks.
As of May 2021, Biden has signed six executive orders in order to curb gun violence, one of which requires the The Justice Department to issue annual reports on firearm trafficking.
Young Activists Call for Change
Among many social issues, younger generations including GenZ have advocated for stricter gun control policy. After the Parkland school shooting in 2018, a student-led group called March for Our Lives emerged, orchestrating demonstrations demanding reforms on gun control.
Emma Gonzalez, 21, is recognized as a prominent activist in the movement. Gonzalez, a Parkland survivor, has spoken at a number of rallies in DC, and has spoken out explicitly about social reform on social media.
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Jake Woolley, a 22-year-old gun owner, and member of a rifle team, believes there should be reform when it comes to gun control in America.
“I do think that there is a problem with gun control in the U.S, more screening needs to be done.” says Woolley of Manasquan, NJ. “People should have the right to protect themselves, but with the government taking steps to create more diligent policies, it’s just like checks and balances.”
Looking Forward to Reform
Only time will tell how advocacy and the legislature will affect America’s gun epidemic. But in the meantime, victims of gun violence live with the impact of the trauma.
Savage, along with his 15 friends, has been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder since the Las Vegas massacre. However, he continues to work through it alongside Jamie, now his wife, and their newborn daughter Scarlett.
“So many of my choices were made on a whim,” says Savage. “Sometimes with sound logic and reasoning but the reality is all the logic, planning, and agility wouldn’t have mattered if Paddock had just moved his fingers a few millimeters to the left or right, we’d be dead. But those choices got us to safety, and we’re alive today.”
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