Carlson how he could defend a war criminal, Kucinich said the choice was to let ISIS take over Syria or "try to stabilize the region and let the people of Syria make their own decisions about who their leaders are going to be". He helped Fox News get an interview with Assad. In October 2016, Kucinich warned against a prospective United States military intervention against Russia in Syria. He argued that "a concerted effort is being made through fearmongering, propaganda, and lies to prepare our country for a dangerous confrontation, with Russia in Syria" and said that Russia was being demonized as part of a "calculated plan to resurrect a raison d'être for stone-cold warriors trying to escape from the dustbin of history by evoking the specter of Russian world domination." Guns Kucinich is graded "F" by the National Rifle Association, indicating a pro-gun control voting record. He also received a 100% lifetime rating from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Health care Kucinich believes that health care is a "right in a democratic society". He is a critic of the for-profit health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and is concerned about the large number of uninsured and underinsured in the United States. He contends that if the for-profit insurance system's overhead, such as "stock options, executive salaries, [and] advertising", were used for medically necessary care, there would be enough money in the system to cover everyone at no extra cost. In July 2009, the House Education and Labor Committee approved an amendment by Kucinich to its version of the unsuccessful America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 by a vote of 27-19, with 14 Democrats and 13 Republicans voting for it. The amendment empowers the Secretary of Health and Human Services to waive the federal law that preempts state law on employee-related health care, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, in response to state requests. It has been speculated that the amendment's bipartisan support was for its appeal to states' rights in supporting progressive legislation. In the past, states attempting to enact single-payer reforms had been sued and stopped under ERISA. It has also been speculated that the law would open up vital new avenues for promoting and implementing a single-payer system, as newly unbound states would show single-payer's success, just as Saskatchewan did for Canada. But the Kucinich Amendment was stripped from the merged House bill. Speaker Nancy