Surprisingly, my DR. has Field and Stream and other related gun and hunting magazines in his office.
He told me once, that he was gangbeat almost to death when he was in college, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he carries.
The NRA and Florida Medical Association can not be described as “Conservative” organizations.
The NRA endorsed flaming liberals like Reid and John Murtha as well as supporting most gun control bills.
The FMA is also a liberal bastion.
I have a hard time with this.
Clearly, gun ownership is a Constitutionally guaranteed right. However, a physician needs to know if a suicidal or homicidal patient has a gun at home. Likewise, preventive medicine would make it important to know if you’re caring for a pediatric patient whether or not parents store their firearms in a way that kids can’t access them.
Unfortunately, there are some lefty doctors out there that undoubtedly use this as a way to promote a personal anti-gun agenda.
I don’t know that criminalizing the asking of questions is a good way to go about it.
As always, you’re free to fire your physician if you find that he or she is making recommendations contrary to what you wish to do.
“I have a hard time justifying a year in jail and $1 million fine for a physician simply asking if a patient properly stores his/her guns. “
I don’t!
It’s a strong incentive to keep them out of our private business.
They ARE NOT simply asking if you “store properly”!
They want to know “who owns”, and will USE THAT INFORMATION AGAINST YOU!
Why would a doctor ask such a question? How is gun ownership a health issue? Might as well ask me if I own a microwave and if I know how to use it safely.
It’s not the Govt’s OR the doctors business how many guns you own or where you store them....
And the question itself is a Govt push...namely from the CDC...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2558940/posts
Remember this will be noted in your medical records...and they are electronic...and HHS has full access...
Now what could go wrong with that?
I concur that the punishment is overboard, but questions about guns in the house is not pertinent to treating the patient. How about a $100 fine, payable to the patient, for each question asked regarding guns in the house.
The doctors don't need to know if you have a gun or not;the purpose is to stigmatize gun ownership and YOUR ANSWER BECOMES PART OF YOUR MEDICAL RECORD which is accessible to insurance companies,and government agencies.
The doctors are assisting in a backdoor gun registration scheme.
In Indiana,a law enforcement person is forbidden from establishing and maintaing even a private list of gun owners,and for good reasons.
ALL forms of gun ownership lists have disarming the private citizen as the ultimate goal.
I support the NRA on this proposed law.
There is also the potential, very likely to occur, for anti RKBA physicians to report anyone they don't approve of to government agencies as unfit to own firearms. Any physician has the power to declare anyone mentally unstable for any reason, valid or not. Even if a trumped up diagnosis didn't stick it could only be overturned at great cost to the victim.
This is, in fact, the hidden agenda of those who started the plan to question patients about guns.
Don't let this physicians lobby fool you, there really is a hidden agenda having nothing to do with medicine.
There is a lot of background to this, and considerable leftist duplicity.
It began with the CDC in Atlanta, which decided out of the blue that gun rights “are a public health issue”, instead of a constitutional right, and so the CDC had the authority to create gun control regulations. (This scheme didn’t last long, for obvious reasons.)
Then the leftist controlled Pediatric Physicians Association decided that Pediatricians were *ethically obligated* to ask parents about guns in the home, “because guns are a *health risk* for children”.
And this got downright evil in a hurry, first because of the HIPPA Act of 1996, which made private health records accessible to lots of commercial and governmental organizations, instead of confidential between physicians and patients; *and* has a provision that doctors *must* disclose personal medical information when required to do so by law, such as reporting “suspected child abuse” to state child welfare agencies.
And owning guns just happens to be regarded as “child abuse” by some radicals, or as a “potential home hazard”.
So a medical file mentioning gun ownership might be used by a State welfare agency in determining of someone was a “fit parent”, or if they should be allowed to adopt a child while having a “potential home hazard”.
In any event, after all of this, and some parents being menaced by their Pediatrician about whether they had guns in their home, even being denied service if they refused to answer, you can see that this was not just a bolt from the blue.
This is why the NRA and the FMA are at loggerheads. While doctors want the freedom to ask their patients questions, any answer that they write down may be used *against* their patient by private corporations or government agencies.
So in truth, if doctors wanted this right, then they should have lobbied long and hard against the HIPPA Act, and its wholesale elimination of the doctor-patient privilege.
But now it’s too late. So the only alternative left is to pass a law forbidding doctors from asking this and related questions. Sorry if it crimps your style, and makes you less able to do your job. But it’s your own fault.
IF my doc asked me about guns....I’d look innocently at him/her and say....”guns?” I don’t store guns”
I am a professor at at medical school and it is a joke to call any medical association “conservative”. Maybe a few of the old bald white guys over 60 but the post Viet Nam generation are as liberal as they get and the new “diversity” crowd are radically liberal.
You will never hear the words “merit” or “competence” in regards to hiring someone. The new buzz words in every sentence are “diversity” and “compliance”.
The AMA is not conservative, and this line of questioning was pushed on docs by the now leftist AMA. The only remedy at this point is to stop it legislatively. With th ehuge databases Obamacare is creating, you don’t want your doctors to be acting like KGB agents collecting information on who has guns. Yes, I’d be happy to throw their white-coated posteriors in jail for trying to advance the cause of the police state. I’d execute them for abortions.
It's not to find out how you store your guns but whether or not you own any guns IIRC. My answer to my own doctor when I was asked if I owned any guns a few years ago was "it's not any of your business whether or not I own guns and don't ever ask that kind of a question of me ever again as you are not my psychiatrist" or words to that effect. And that was the end of that.
What a crock of BS information...It is the federal & state governments that started the Dr's asking the questions to begin with back in the late 90's...
When my youngest grandchild was born (MD - 2000), 3-minutes after my daughter got to the recovery room a nurse arrived with a 3-page questionnaire that included asking whether my daughter and son-in-law or any other members of their family owned guns...She told the nurse NOYB...
Right, cause only leftist doctor groups like the AMA and fake doctor groups like the PRCM should intrude in the doctor-patient relationship. Anyone conservative doing so would be wrong.
Guns are not a medical issue and if a doctor asks me a question about how I store my guns or anything of that sort, I will not be back to that doctor again. I will also file a complaint with the BBB and Medical board as the doctor is practicing something he or she is not qualified to do.
Doctors need to stick to being doctors and not what they perceive as safety experts. They aren’t and are overstepping their bounds.