One Year Later, Vegas Shooting Survivor Sees Progress on Guns
*By Carlo Versano*
Exactly one year after the worst mass shooting in modern American history, one survivor has reason for optimism.
Robert Gaafar, who attended the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas last year, told Cheddar that despite the unresponsive pace of gun legislation on the federal level, he is heartened by progress in statehouses around the country.
Last October, Stephen Paddock opened fire from the window of his Mandalay Bay suite, killing 58 in a 10-minute reign of terror before turning his gun on himself.
Since then, 18 states, with governors who span the political spectrum, have passed gun regulations, while 11 have passed bans on bump stocks ー the lethal devices that turn rifles into ad hoc machine guns. Paddock had 14 bump stocks as part of his arsenal, allowing him to fire more than 1,100 rounds into the crowd below him.
"We can do something about this," Gaafar said. As part of the Everytown Survivor Network, he is helping promote the gun-control group's new $5 million ad campaign ahead of the midterm elections.
The campaign, "Not One More," targets voters in 15 competitive House districts with messaging about gun safety and promotes "gun sense candidates," as Gaafar called them.
Gaafar, an entrepreneur who founded BeerBox, an internet-connected beer vending machine, never planned to become a gun safety activist. Then again, he never planned to be part of a moving target of 20,000 people running for cover "in between reloads," he said.
On the one year anniversary of the Vegas shooting, Gaafar and Everytown have focused on supporting state and local politicians who back "straightforward and common sense" gun laws ー like universal background checks, a policy that has near-universal support. Like many others, Gaafar said he's disheartened when he hears politicians say that nothing can be done to stop the American epidemic of gun violence.
"Laws do something," he said. "The basic role of government is to protect its citizens."
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/how-one-las-vegas-shooting-survivor-is-working-to-change-americas-gun-laws).
Earlier today, Minnesota Republican Representative, Tom Emmer, introduced a bill that would prevent the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency directly to American consumers. According to the Congressman from Minnesota, requiring Americans to open a fed account to access a digital currency, would "put the Fed on insidious path akin to China's digital authoritarianism." Rep. Tom Emmer joined Cheddar's None of The Above to discuss more.
Sixteen of the country's most prestigious universities have been hit with a lawsuit claiming those schools illegally conspired to eliminate competitive financial aid offers for students. Just some of the schools mentioned include Yale, Brown, Columbia, UPenn, and Cornell. Author of "Who Gets In and Why" and Professor of practice at Arizona State University, Jeff Selingo, joined Cheddar to discuss more.
Navient, a major student loan collecting company, agreed to cancel $1.7 billion in debt owed by more than 66,000 borrowers across the U.S. and pay over $140 million in other penalties to settle allegations of abusive lending practices.
The recently expired child tax credit helped a wide swathe of families throughout the U.S. Megan Pratz looks into the impact the payments had, and how the end of the program will have a drastic effect on families that could still use the help with child care.
The Supreme Court has stopped the Biden administration from enforcing a requirement that employees at large businesses be vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing and wear a mask on the job.
Buckingham Palace says that Prince Andrew’s honorary military titles and royal patronages have been returned to Queen Elizabeth II with her “approval and agreement.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has apologized for attending a garden party during Britain’s first coronavirus lockdown, but brushed aside opposition demands that he resign for breaching the rules his own government had imposed on the nation.
North Korea says leader Kim Jong Un oversaw a successful flight test of a hypersonic missile he claimed would remarkably increase the country’s “war deterrent.”
