Former Pussycat Doll Kaya Jones, who was at the Route 91 country music festival near the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas when a gunman opened fire, told Breitbart News she wished she was armed during the devastating attack that left 58 people and scores more injured.
“All of us in that moment wished we’d had a gun,” Jones told Breitbart News. “Because in our head was ‘someone could come through that door and we only have seven rounds in that gun.’ That’s the truth.”
Gunman Stephan Paddock reportedly had somewhere between 18 and 20 guns in his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay.
Jones was an honorary guest of John and Kenny from Big & Rich, because of her support for the U.S. military. She was locked down in John Rich’s bar, the Redneck Riviera, which was located near the scene of the shooting with several people, including an FBI agent who was on his honeymoon.
“John happened to have a gun and he was the only one with a gun and we were barricaded and an officer, I think he was FBI he comes over to John and asked him if he was carrying and asked John if he could take his gun to guard the room because he was not carrying,” Jones said. “He had someone check his badge and handed over his weapon. And that man stood at the door and protected us as best as he could. But the reality is, no one else was carrying.”
Jones said everyone in that room became family that night.
“It’s horrible to hear people politicize something that is a travesty,” Jones said, referring to Hillary Clinton’s tweets and a “top legal executive at CBS, Hayley Geftman-Gold,” who used Facebook to express that she was “not even sympathetic” about those murdered because “country music fans often are Republican gun toters.” Geftman-Gold has since been fired.
“There are innocent people that are dead. Let’s make it about them now,” Jones told Breitbart News. “What can we do to prevent this again? Make it about this crazy lunatic that’s followed an ideology, that’s crept its way into our planet, that’s sympathized from the left all the time, to a point where it’s nonsense and foolishness now.”
Sounding off on the importance of protecting the Second Amendment, Jones told Breitbart News, “less guns don’t equal less terrorists. And I’m going to keep saying that until everyone understands: We can take away guns.” She added, “if you have a madman, he’ll use a car (as we’ve seen), or a knife (as we’ve seen), or a bomb (as we’ve seen). This is what terror is. It doesn’t come in the form of a gun. Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. And I’ll tell you the one thing that makes us feel safe is that John Rich had a pistol that he handed to an FBI agent.”
She added, “but to blame guns when the man and his crazy self took innocent lives last night. It could have been me. It could have been John. It could have been Big Kenny. It could have been the veterans on that stage. And it happened to be other people. I just feel grateful and at the same time I feel why them and not us.” Jones added that she does feel “survivor’s guilt.”
“I just feel grateful and at the same time I feel like why them and not us,” Jones said.
Jones’s journey has been one steeped in faith. She explained, “I’ve always had one foot in heaven and one foot on earth. Being in the Pussycat Dolls, I didn’t realize I had to go through my own journey:”
I didn’t realize that I was conservative and had a narrative that was fitting and they would understand me. I was really scared that if I told my truth, I wouldn’t have a fan base. That’s what you’re told in mainstream: You can’t talk about your religion. You can’t talk about certain things. Everything is so pre-done. It’s so scripted. What you eat, what you say, what you wear. It’s so much control that coming out with my truth in support of President Trump. Coming out with God first has really been, for me, the most amazing thing because it’s been setting me free to tell my truth and say this is what I am and I’m not ashamed of it. And even more now, I’m not ashamed of it because this is what our country needs now. We need to not be ashamed of being Christian, not be ashamed of being conservative or Libertarian. Not be ashamed or silenced anymore or pushed into a corner.
In the end, Jones said she feels a responsibility to send a message of unity. “We need to unify. We need to always unify,” she said. “This is the United States. We need to be united, not divided. We need to not allow — whether it’s foreign or domestic terrorism — the right to think that they can smile over us and say, ‘We got ’em.’ You don’t. you’re not going to break the United States. No matter how hard they try, we’re a free nation. And they hate us for that. They hate the fact that we’re a free nation. And the sympathy in this country that’s going against our freedom is what’s really scary” She added, “Are you guys getting it? Because that could have been you. And I don’t think they’re going to get it until it’s in their backyard.”
Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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