Trump Praises ‘Indescribable’ Police, Medical Response to Las Vegas Shootings
President Donald Trump, on a visit to Las Vegas in the wake of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, praised the work of medical personnel treating the victims in the massacre, in which 59 people were killed and more than 500 injured.
Trump visited University Medical Center to meet with victims, families, and medical professionals.
“It makes you very proud to be an American when you see the job that they’ve done,” he told reporters afterward, with his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, at his side. He said that those at the hospital “have done a job that is indescribable.”
He said that those who were wounded in the deadly shootings were “incredible,” and described “people leaving ambulances to have somebody else go because they thought they were hurt even more so.”
Police said that the assailant, Stephen Paddock, 64, fired down from the 32nd floor of a hotel room at the Mandalay Bay down at a country music festival taking place on Sunday evening. Authorities said that Paddock killed himself before they got to his room.
Earlier on Wednesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced legislation to ban so-called bump stocks, devices placed on semi-automatic rifles to increase their lethal capacity. Police said that the devices were found on some of Paddock’s guns.
Trump said that the assailant was a “sick, demented man,” but he did not say if he would be taking any steps to pursue gun legislation or to take other measures.
Trump also met with emergency personnel at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, telling them, “You showed the world, and the world is watching, what professionalism is all about, because something like that could take place for hours and hours and hours and you can’t figure it out.”
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