A U.S. Marine who survived two mass shootings is getting ready to be deployed to Afghanistan in two weeks for his first tour of duty.
Brendan Kelly, 22, told The New York Times in an article published Wednesday that his experience living through the mass shootings in Las Vegas and Thousand Oaks, Calif., only galvanized his desire to serve his country abroad in the new year, so he can protect fundamental freedoms at home — including the right to bear arms.
“This is what I can do,” Kelly told the newspaper. “This is what my role is supposed to be, as an able bodied and willing young man.”
Kelly lost two of his friends last month when a gunman opened fire at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, killing 12 people in total. He and another friend survived the 2017 massacre at the Route 91 country music festival in Las Vegas, which claimed the lives of 58 people. Kelly, who was hailed a hero for shielding a young woman he had met that night in Las Vegas, still has nightmares “replaying the terrible things that happened.”
“God has big plans for me, and I know that,” Kelly said, adding he briefly saw a therapist after Las Vegas. “Even though I’ve been through all these events, I am just a guy that’s trying to figure it out like everybody else is at the end of the day. And try to make sense of it all. It’s going to be O.K. that it doesn’t make sense because there’s no real way for it to make sense.”
Kelly, a quadruplet with two younger siblings, first signed up as a reserve officer in 2015, following his grandfather and two of his brothers into the military.
He told the Times his tour would likely last between six to eight months and that he would ideally train as an urban firefighter when he returns.
