Can arming doctors with data help reduce gun violence?
Dean Winslow sat before the Senate Armed Services Committee last fall as President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the Pentagon’s top health official. His confirmation hearing, occurring two days after an Air Force veteran shot and killed 26 people inside a Texas church, appeared routine until a senator asked a question about the gunman’s military discharge status.
Dr. Winslow, a professor of medicine at Stanford University who deployed six times to Iraq and Afghanistan with the Air National Guard, offered his thoughts on the military’s discharge system. The retired colonel then added a personal aside born of outrage at the country’s latest mass shooting.
“But I also would like to — and I may get in trouble with other members of the committee — just say how insane it is that, in the United States of America, a civilian can go out and buy a semi-automatic assault rifle like an AR-15,
‘We’re just guessing’ Cold, hard, nonpartisan facts