It’s been five years since carnage and death sent his family running into the night, leaving them separated and terrified as a gunman rained bullets into an outdoor country music festival crowd on the Las Vegas Strip.
The memories don’t fade, they sharpen, William “Bill” Henning said as he prepared for ceremonies in Las Vegas marking the date of the Oct. 1, 2017, massacre.
“Chaotic and unreal, » he recalled. “A human stampede. People were bleeding and screaming and running. We all got separated. We didn’t know who was alive. That was the most difficult.”
He’s now part of a survivor community thousands strong, one that’s helped him sort through the horror of what happened during the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Fifty-eight people were killed and more than 850 were injured among a crowd of 22,000.
In the years since, the grim drumbeat of mass shootings has continued: schools in Uvalde, Texas, and Parkland, Florida; grocery stores in Buffalo, New York, and Boulder, Colorado; bars in Dayton, Ohio, and Thousand Oaks, California; a city building in Virginia Beach, Virginia; a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Meanwhile, the debate over gun laws in the U.S. rages on, including a renewed challenge to the federal regulation sparked by the Las Vegas shooting.
Nevada U.S. Rep. Dina Titus on Saturday called again for a federal law banning bump stocks, the devices used by the Las Vegas shooter that allow a semi-automatic rifle to fire repeatedly with just one pull of the trigger. They were outlawed by rule by the Trump Administration but face court challenges.
And President Joe Biden also called for renewed efforts to tighten firearms laws Saturday while mourning the victims and praising residents who came together in the aftermath of the shooting.
The president noted executive action he’s taken to crack down on ghost guns and rogue gun dealers and the passage of the first significant firearms legislation in 30 years. That bipartisan law signed by Biden in June in part boosts protections for domestic violence victims, funnels cash to states for firearms crime prevention and has money for mental health services.
« But, we’re not stopping there, » Biden said in a statement. “I am determined to seize this momentum and work with Congress to enact further commonsense gun violence prevention legislation, including banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, which have enabled shooters to slaughter so many innocents.
