How would legislation like this be greeted in Olympia?(WA)

Seattle Gun Rights Examiner ^ | 31 January, 2011 | Dave Workman

[marktwain]

Evergreen State gun owners who have been alarmed about questionnaires in doctors’ offices that inquire about guns in the home might want to check what’s going on in Florida’s Legislature right now, and wonder how the same matter might be handled in Olympia.

I have seen such questionnaires here in Washington State, and even written about one case down in the Vancouver area. The argument against such questionnaires is pretty straightforward: Unless a physician is also a certified firearms instructor, he/she has no business asking about guns in the home or offering advice on home firearms safety, gun storage or whether someone should even own a gun.

At issue is HB 155, a Florida measure that would slap heavy fines and even jail time on physicians who ask about the presence of firearms in the homes of patients, what Dr. Timothy Wheeler with Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership calls a “boundary violation.” Marion Hammer, executive director of the Unified Sportsmen of Florida and the first female president of the National Rifle Association, is openly critical of such boundary violations.

Physicians who try to define firearms as a health care issue and counsel their patients against owning guns are, according to Hammer, practicing politics.

It’s not just doctors’ offices that practice this quiet form of anti-gun bigotry. Hospitals, including Seattle’s Harborview, Tacoma General and Bellevue’s Overlake prohibit firearms on the premises.

Statistically, they don’t need firearms in hospitals to rack up a body count. Google Dr. Barbara Starfield with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. More than ten years ago, she published results of a study that shook up the medical community. Her findings indicated that an estimated 225,000 medically-caused deaths occur in the United States annually from such things as giving the wrong medications to performing unnecessary surgeries. She did an interview last year with John Rappaport that appeared on his blog and again on Mathaba.net that reiterated her findings. The annual number of firearms-related deaths pales by comparison, average around 32,500.

· 12,000 deaths from unnecessary surgeries;

· 7,000 deaths from medication errors in hospitals;

· 20,000 deaths from other errors in hospitals;

· 80,000 deaths from infections acquired in hospitals;

· 106,000 deaths from FDA-approved correctly prescribed medicines.

The total of medically-caused deaths in the US every year is 225,000.—Mathaba.net

Firearms instructors do not habitually practice medicine. Yet the American Academy of Pediatrics posts the following advice about Keeping Kids Safe from guns:

* 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.

Yes, by all means, make children paranoid and ignorant about firearms. Raise them to become gun prohibitionists.

This column wants to hear from you, below. Have you ever been asked by a doctor, especially a pediatrician, about firearms in the home?

All of this might be avoided if everyone had a doctor like mine. He’s a member of my gun club out in Snoqualmie, and is something of an AR-15 aficionado. He would never ask me about guns in the home. He already knows.

[marktwain]

I understand that the Florida legislation makes it illegal to refuse care based on the answer or non-answer to a question about guns, and it makes it illegal to use the questions to establish a database of gun owners.

[cc2k]

Here's a link to the Florida bill information from our legislature's web site:

Florida HB 155

I don't see my representative on the co-sponsor list. Looks like I need to make a phone call and fax today.

[SECURE AMERICA]

They can kiss my lily white ass with their gun questions. Do they ask on the form if you exercise your right to vote ? No
Do they ask if you ask exercise your free speech rights on the form? No. Then they have no right to ask if you exercise your 2nd Amendment Right either.

[Seruzawa]

Ha! My doctor likes to show off her trophy photos. LOL!

[Jonah Hex]

I had a firearms question on my 50-year physical questionaire. My response?

"MYOB"

[SampleMan]

I understand that the Florida legislation makes it illegal to refuse care based on the answer or non-answer to a question about guns, and it makes it illegal to use the questions to establish a database of gun owners.

Your understanding is wrong. As written, the FL bill makes it a felony to simply ask a question, any question concerning firearms. A truly moronic law.

Get government out of medicine and then leave doctors the hell alone. If you don't like them asking about bicycles, hot frying pans, or whether your psychotic brother has access to firearms, go to a different doctor. We have no right to avoid all questions referencing our lives. Just the right not to answer. And doctors should have the right to choose their patients.

The answer to government intrusion into personal decisions is not more government intrusion into personal decisions.

If you want to pass laws against reporting ownership, then feel free, but if you make that a blanket law, how exactly do you then expect to stop known crazy people who tell their doctor that they are going to go home, get their gun, and kill their family?

And why may I ask only make it a felony for doctors? If being asked about firearms is felonious behavior, then make it illegal for everyone, not just doctors. Of course that will make it awful quiet down at the gunshop.

[sionnsar]

Say WA? Evergreen State ping

Quick link: WA State Board

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[libstripper]

At issue is HB 155, a Florida measure that would slap heavy fines and even jail time on physicians who ask about the presence of firearms in the homes of patients, what Dr. Timothy Wheeler with Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership calls a “boundary violation.” Marion Hammer, executive director of the Unified Sportsmen of Florida and the first female president of the National Rifle Association, is openly critical of such boundary violations.

At first blush this looks good, but it raises some serious questions. My internist is far more of a gun nut than I am. Every time I see him we talk happily about the various guns we have and don't have and what we're doing with them. All of that definitely includes questions of storage, home defense, and carrying, all of which discussions are protected by the First Amendment. We also discuss what can be done politiclly to protect RTKBA and strengthen the Tea Party.

It looks like this legislation could prohibit all of that discussion. Thus, it needs to be narrowed to intrusive questions the patient objects to and is required to answer as a condition of receiving treatment. For example, when a patient first comes to a doctor, the patient is required to fill out a medical questionaire that includes the patient's medicdal condition, medications, and operations. That type of questionaire should not include questions about firearms in the patient's home and questions a about the patient's political views. General disussions between the patient and doctor about politics, guns, etc. should simply be left to the doctor patient relationship.