This is NOT something to get mad about.
Just because you recognize gun rights does not mean a doctor does not have the right to discuss guns with you. I don’t think a doctor should be shut up about his or the medical profession’s opinion on having guns. They also tell us it’s bad to smoke and be fat, which kind of irks me, but they should have the right to say it.
The doctor may have the right to discuss guns with you, but if he starts to ask questions, you also have the right to ignore his questions.
The number and type of guns I “may” own is none of his business. If I say I don’t own a gun, he “may” relay that information, along with my address, to certain friends of his that want to do harm to me or my family. A doctor is no more trustworthy than anyone else.
You don’t know the story behind the story. The AAP is led by radicals, and it was their intention from the start to use pediatricians to essentially threaten gun owning parents, directly and indirectly, that their children could be taken from them if they continued to own guns. It was done in a very cynical and duplicitous manner.
First, the AAP passed a rule that made it the “ethical responsibility” of pediatricians to talk to the parents of their patients, to determine if they had guns in their homes. Refusal to say was *grounds*, as far as the AAP was concerned, for pediatricians to refuse service.
And this matters, because people may live very far from the next pediatrician, or a small group of pediatricians who were anti-gun could basically lock them out of reasonable pediatric care at all in a large radius.
Second, any information they provided would be put into the child’s electronic medical file, where it could be readily accessed, without warrant, by law enforcement and the State’s Child Protective Services, among many others. This meant that, *for any reason*, if parents were investigated by CPS, their *ownership* of guns could be used as a consideration of whether or not they were “fit parents”.
That is, their owning guns could be a partial “reason” to take their children away.
Third, if parents had a child, and wished to adopt another child, their gun ownership could be cited as a “reason” to not let them adopt, because they “had an unsafe household”. That is, because they owned guns.
The utter viciousness of the AAP in doing this was very intentional, done with tremendous cynicism about “first amendment rights”, because they wanted to *facilitate* the stripping of parents of their second amendment rights. It was a very planned scheme, and the intention had nothing to do with children, and everything to do with gun control.
From the AAP website:
“Advice to parents
“The best way to keep your children safe from injury or death from guns is to NEVER have a gun in the home.
-Do not purchase a gun, especially a handgun.
-Remove all guns present in the home.
-Talk to your children about the dangers of guns, and tell them to stay away from guns.
-Find out if there are guns in the homes where your children play. If so, talk to the adults in the house about the dangers of guns to their families.”
You may not fully understand. It is not just a discussion, it is a Medical Records chart, in writing, with SS# of parents on it... and many other items. It can and will be linked to national databases. This is not right. Correct safety with firearms is a function of proper parenting and training. The questionnaire doesn’t ask about other things— like crack in the home, alcoholism of the parents,
The pediatrician’s national group has a position paper (based on CDC “studies” of dubious merit and politically left wing driven outcomes, like global warming) on the private ownership of weapons, all sorts, and guns. The database gathered in such questioning goes to insurance companies-— no privacy at all.
And, one should add, under obamacare this would be nationalized and interfaced with the IRS and Treasury. De Facto ad hoc removal of the 2nd Amendment. It is like Hitler and the brownshirts confiscating guns from Jews, and others because of their “public safety” threat. It happened and this is neosocialism.
Physicians operate within the 1st Amendment to the extent that their patients will let them. Just like anywhere else. And this crosses the line into serious Big Brother medicine.
The suit will be appealed by Atty General with numerous amicus briefs.
The problem isn't with a doctor "discussing" anything. The problem comes when a doctor is duty-bound by the State to record and report your answers.
Any doctor who tracks patients' gun ownership should be fired by said patients.
He has no "right". The premise of the licensing system for physicians is that there is no right to practice and that practice is subject to regulation. The question is of a non-medical nature, the answer to which is of no import to treatment, and for which there is no medical remedy. Unless answering the question affects the method of treatment, it is pointless to ask that question. If the doctor DOES allow the answer to affect his treatment, then he is medically incompetent and should be delicensed. If the doctor requires that a patient answer so that he can then lecture him about a purely political issue, then the doctor is effectively holding health as hostage to a political agenda.
We need to start a central database of these agendized, supposed professionals so that we can boycott them.