[Martin Tell]

Recently the wife and I took our eight year old in for her routine check-up. The pediatrician asked our daughter a number of usual questions, one I had not heard before ("do you always wear a helmet when you ride a bicycle?") and then "are there any guns in the house?" My daughter said no, as she does not know (partly because I do not want busy-bodies to find out that I bear arms by quizzing my daughter)about the firearms I have located in a secure but rapidly-accessable location. So, I said nothing, but I was floored. I have since wondered if I should have protested this invasion of privacy, lectured the doc about the facts of gun ownership and safety, inquired about her views on the US Constitution, etc. I think gun control is being cast as a public-health/child safety issue now (BTW I have started educating my daughter by telling her about the Minutemen and the Second Amendment - she certainly won't hear about this in school). I like the doc and she never struck me as someone who would support the state interfering in parent/child relations. Maybe this is part of the Oprah-izing of America. Has anyone else run into similar pediatrician questions?

[Maelstrom]

I headed off the doctor's questions by dropping my copy of American Rifleman off at the doctor's waiting room when I was finished with it.

Funny how those questions just magically disappeared, but then, so did the magazines...

[CBF]

Hate to be the one that has to tell you but you ran into new policy enacted by the American Pediactics Association. In their charter they are now united in their agreement to ask these questions as a part of their "responsibility" to child health and safety. I suggest you do complain to the idiotic moron doctor, tell him why you are leaving his practice, and preferrably do it in the waiting room, loudly!

Next time ask your doctor if he is a communist before subjecting your daughter to his ministrations.