Political Quotes

“I would like to take a moment to acknowledge an extraordinary woman from my home State of Illinois. Heather Gooze lives in Nevada now, but she grew up in the Chicago area. She is a survivor of the worst mass shooting in modern American history. On October 1, she was working as a bartender at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas. She was there when a gunman with his own private arsenal rained down gunfire from a high-rise hotel, murdering 58 innocent people and injuring more than 500 others. Ms. Gooze testified at a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on ``bump stocks,'' the $200 accessory that the Las Vegas gunman used to make his assault rifles fire almost as fast as a machine gun. When she heard the first round of shots, Heather thought it might have been fireworks, but suddenly people were running in every direction. Some were shot; many were covered in blood. Heather directed wounded and frightened people to an exit. With about 20 other people, she then pushed down a fence to make it easier for people to escape the gunfire. She could have run to safety herself. Instead, she went back to the bar to try to help people who had been shot and lay wounded on the ground. One young man had been shot in the head. Heather held a jean jacket to his wound to try to staunch the bleeding. When she dropped the jacket, she used her fingers to try to plug the hole in the young man's head. He died the next day.…”