December 21, 2017

Action Alert:
Thank Trump Nominee for Speaking Truth About Assault Weapons


Last week, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, Dean Winslow, withdrew his name from consideration to be assistant secretary of defense for health affairs after the Senate Armed Services Committee put his nomination on indefinite hold.

Retired Air Force Colonel (Dr.) Dean Winslow spent 35 years in the Air National Guard as a medical officer. He was deployed four times to Iraq and twice to Afghanistan.

The reason for his nomination being tabled? Professor Winslow testified before the committee the day after the horrific shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas (26 killed, 20 injured) and when asked about the tragedy, opined, “I’d also like to . . . just say how insane it is that in the United States of America a civilian can go out and buy a semiautomatic weapon like an AR-15.”

Winslow was chastised by the chairman of the committee, John McCain, who said the professor had no “area of responsibility or expertise” in speaking on assault weapons.

McCain is wrong. Winslow is a veteran who served as commander of an Air Force hospital in Baghdad during the surge. As he recently wrote in a Washington Post editorial, “I have seen what [assault weapons like the AR-15] do to human beings. The injuries are devastating.”

Please contact Dean Winslow through one of the channels below and send him a message based on the following template:

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you speaking truth about AR-15s and other semiautomatic battlefield rifles that are freely available on the civilian market in the United States. For you to say what you did on camera in front of sitting Senators means the world to me. I am so sorry your appointment for assistant secretary of defense for health affairs was treated in this manner by Senate Armed Services Committee chair John McCain. You deserved better. You are exactly the kind of person we need in that position. I will remember what you did here and look forward to seeing where public service calls you next. Your country needs you.

Dean Winslow
Phone: (650) 723-6661
Email: dwinslow@stanford.edu

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