Op-Ed: I Survived The Vegas Shooting. Now I’m Urging the Supreme Court to Never Let This Happen Again

3 min readNine years ago today, I went to a music festival with my sister and our friends. What started as a fun night quickly turned into a nightmare. By the time I could understand what was happening, rapid-fire gunshots rang out, and I realized my sister was using her body to shield mine. The next few minutes felt like hours while I stayed as still as I could to not expose our position to the shooter.Over 1,000 rounds were fired into the crowd that day. Sixty people were murdered and hundreds more were wounded. In a matter of 10 minutes, the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas became the deadliest mass shooting in American history. My sister and I survived, and since then we have channeled our fear, pain, and trauma into advocacy for true common-sense gun laws in Nevada and around the nation that place tighter restrictions on assault weapons, for example.Getty ImagesThe gunman who unleashed evil carnage around us didn’t use a handgun. He used multiple AR-15s equipped with bump stocks, attachments that allow the guns to mimic automatic fire. These deadly weapons allowed him to murder dozens of concertgoers in minutes, all from the 32nd floor of a hotel nearby. These are weapons of war and destruction, but thanks to our out-of-date gun laws, they were legal to purchase in many states, including Nevada. They still are.Thanks to the relentless advocacy of thousands of survivors like us, Nevada has since enacted a law to ban bump stocks and divest from assault weapons manufacturers, but the true challenge lies ahead: banning these violent assault weapons altogether. In mass shootings, four times as many people are shot when an assault weapon or high-capacity magazine is involved compared with incidents involving neither.A 2024 study also found that the federal assault weapons ban, which was in place from 1994 to 2004, was associated with a significant decrease in public mass shootings and related casualties, preventing up to five public mass shootings during the 10 years it was in effect. Researchers also estimated that, if the law had remained in effect from 2005 through 2022, it would have prevented 38 public mass shootings.In a matter of weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case that challenges the constitutionality of assault weapon bans across the country. This is a turning point in our nation’s history—the Court could soon issue a ruling that would threaten the safety of the more than 100 million Americans currently living in states that restrict assault weapons.As the Court prepares to decide if these life-saving reforms should stand, I urge them to listen to my story. Listen to my sister’s. Listen to the families of the 60 people killed in the Route 91 shooting, to the more than 100,000 people who are shot each year, to more than half of adults in America who are survivors of gun violence. We all have one plea: protect our communities from these deadly weapons.These guns are not for recreation. They are used to kill and wound as many people as possible as quickly as possible. The data shows us that when we restrict these violent weapons, our communities are safer. Our families are kept whole. And we can go to houses of worship, theaters, and concerts without fearing for our lives.As a mother myself, this passion is truly personal. We have the chance now to keep our children safe from weapons that were never meant for civilians. We can elect gun sense candidates in Nevada and around the nation, who will fight the moneyed gun lobby and gun extremists and push for common-sense gun safety policies. And we can let the Supreme Court know that our voices are louder than gunfire.Geena Springmann/WH IllustrationGeena Springmann is a resident of Nevada and a survivor fellow with the Everytown Survivor Network. Springmann is a survivor of the 2017 Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas.