[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 20594-20595]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO HEATHER GOOZE

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, 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.
  She then saw three men trying to move another badly injured man using 
a metal ladder as a stretcher. Heather reached out to grab a corner of 
the ladder and help lift it. The young man on the ladder grabbed her 
hand, squeezed it lightly, and then let go--dead.
  Heather looked around, saw other dead bodies lying alone, and decided 
that she would not leave that young man alone like that.
  She stayed with his body for hours, until 3:30 in the morning.
  When his cell phone rang, she answered. She told the young man's 
mother that her only child had died. The young man's girlfriend had 
escaped the killing field to the safety of a nearby hotel. Heather told 
her that young woman that the love of her life was gone, but Heather 
would stay with him and learn for the family where his body would be 
taken.
  At the recent hearing, Heather said that horrific night in Las Vegas 
made her part of a growing, grieving ``family'' she had hoped never to 
join: the American family of survivors and victims of mass shootings.
  She said that she has asked herself many times in the days after the 
shooting why she stayed and risked her life for young men she didn't 
know and for their grieving families. She said the only answer she 
could come up with was that she hoped that someone would do the same 
for her and not leave her alone in the midst of a massacre.
  I think that is the same plea that many Americans have for this 
Congress. They understand that gun safety

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is a politically heated issue. They understand that there are 
constitutional and legal questions that are difficult to balance.
  They want us to have the courage to take up that debate rationally, 
responsibly and respectfully.
  On an average day, 93 Americans are killed with guns--93 people a 
day, every day. Over 30,000 Americans a year die from guns. Many more 
live in daily fear that they could be next.
  I hope that we can agree to be more like Heather Gooze, to not 
abandon our fellow Americans to face that danger and fear of gun 
violence alone. Supporting Senator Feinstein's bill to ban the sale of 
``bump stocks'' would be a good place to start.

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