I went to the doctor this morning – nothing urgent, just a checkup for a mid-40s guy who hasn’t been to the doctor in years, but when they gave me that ubiquitous survey about my lifestyle (Do you smoke? How often do you drink?), I was looking for one particular question:
Do you own a gun in your home?
Doctors are increasingly asking this question, and conservative lawmakers are trying to stop them.
In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott signed a law in 2011 banning doctors from asking about firearms in their patients’ lives, The Washington Post is reporting.
But doctors still think this is a great idea … you know, to protect you from yourself. In a new study, they said that no law should stop them from asking about guns:
“Firearm violence is an important health problem, and most physicians agree that they should help prevent that violence,” wrote Garen J. Wintemute, a public health expert at the University of California Davis and co-author of the paper, in an email to The Washington Post. In the literature review, which doubles as a call-to-arms, the authors conclude it is neither illegal nor unreasonable to ask patients about gun safety.
“No federal or state law prohibits doctors from asking about firearms, counseling about their use, and — when there is imminent risk of harm — disclosing information to others who can help,” Wintemute said. Several states have mulled statutes similar to Florida’s, but none of the proposed bills have passed.
“Physicians seek to prevent important health problems at the individual and population levels,” Wintemute and his colleagues write. “They inquire and counsel—routinely in some cases, selectively in others—about a wide range of health-related behaviors and conditions. In certain circumstances, they disclose otherwise confidential information to third parties to limit the risk an affected person poses to others. Physicians generally do not do well at firearm related injury prevention, however. They ask infrequently about firearms and counsel poorly, if at all, though they are aware that the high lethality of firearms makes prevention efforts particularly important.”
I can understand discussing your weight and your personal habits. I get that you need to give your history. But guns should never, ever be part of that discussion. Under Obamacare and the current gun-grabbing Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, doctors are invasively questioning their patients (including children) if there are any firearms in their home. Any doctor worth their salt, will refuse to ask their patients this question. Whatever happened to standing on your principles no matter the cost? This is one of those issues and if a doctor does this with me or my family, it’s a deal breaker. It’s not paranoia when the government is actively looking for ways to strip you of your rights. This will get far worse under Hillary Clinton. But don’t fool yourself… under a Trump presidency, you are going to be subjected to this as well. #AlwaysConstitution.