Posted on 08/17/2012 10:10:57 AM PDT by marktwain
Why would the Florida Legislature pass a law that prevents doctors from asking patients about guns in their homes?
Opponents of the law, now struck down by the U.S. District Court, maintain that the law violates doctors' First Amendment right of free speech. The doctors insist they only want to educate patients about gun safety.
But none of the doctor organizations fighting the law have admitted to the public why the "Docs vs. Glocks" law, or Firearm Owner's Privacy Act, was necessary in the first place. Not the American Academy of Pediatrics. Not the American Academy of Family Physicians. Not even U.S. District Court Judge Marcia Cooke, who didn't even mention in her opinion the years-long gun control campaign waged by medical organizations.
Here's the truth: the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Medical Association (AMA), and other medical organizations want guns banned. As far back as 1996, the AAP distributed a pamphlet jointly with the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, a part of the Brady Campaign, then tellingly known as Handgun Control, Inc. The pamphlet, part of an ad campaign called STOP, advised parents, "The best way to reduce gun risks is to remove the gun from your home."
The AAP further reinforces its gun-ban message in its official policy, detailed on the AAP website. The policy's summary and recommendation section reads, "The AAP recommends that pediatricians incorporate questions about guns into their patient history taking and urge parents who possess guns to remove them, especially handguns, from the home."
This advice crosses the line from proper safety guidance to political activism in the doctor's office. But doctors felt empowered by the directive from the AAP to spread the gospel of gun control, using their examination rooms as a bully pulpit.
(Excerpt) Read more at articles.orlandosentinel.com ...
But then, both go hand in hand.
More BS
Florida PING.
If I want to know my doctors opinion about guns, I’ll ask for it
“No, Sir. No guns in MY house. Guns are evil. Guns kill people! And, I hate to admit it, Sir, but guns skeer me...”
“...protects patients”
That’s the problem with this law - it assumes that patients need the government to protect them from a doctor’s questions. I don’t want my doctor asking me about guns, but if he does, I’m more than capable of finding myself a new doctor without government intervention, thank you very much. Free market solutions are far better than a law that dictated what a doctor can or cannot say to a patient or ask a patient.
Why?
While their medical advice is based on years of training and experience I have found that their advice about guns,etc to be based of hearsay evidence, at best.
Besides, once our medical records become digitized and available to anyone what is to prevent a governmental entity from electronically accessing everyone’s records and creating a clandestine list of gun owners invisible to Congress and, hence immune to prohibitions on such lists?
I think you are misunderstanding the law. It is not protecting them from the doctors questions. It is protecting them from the government that gets the answers to the doctors questions in their data base.
Lame. What makes doctors experts in firearms? Unless they have a certificate in firearm safety, anything they say about the subject can be classified as the opinion of an amateur .
If that is the case, then the correct response (that is, the response that most closely adheres to pro-freedom/limited-government principles) would be to prohibit that information from being entered into any database that may be accessible to any government agency or authority. The correct response is NOT to legislate what a doctor may or may not say to a patient or ask a patient.
When my doctor asks me about guns, he want to know if I have anything new that he can borrow, shoot, admire, etc. And then he shows me the picture of his prize elk (same picture, three straight years).
That is what the law does. It is being mischaracterized by the media. Surprise, surprise. Doctors are allowed to talk to patients about guns. They are not allowed to enter answers into data bases, or to deny patients care because they chose not to answer questions about guns.
I suspect that after January 1 2014 that question will be required for every doctor patient relationship and a while later, perhaps in 2015, anyone refusing to answer or affirming a gun in the home will be terminated from all medical care and/or taxed with the money being drawn immediately from the victim’s bank account. Justice Roberts says the government can require anything at all so long as the penalty for noncompliance is a tax.
Regards,
GtG
“The Florida law, to stop doctors from interrogating children and their parents about gun ownership and guns in the home, and entering the information into medical records, is especially important now given the current state of healthcare in our country. And on June 29, in an order that reads like it was written by the Brady Campaign and the anti-gun lawyers of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Miami Judge Marcia Cooke struck down the so-called “Docs & Glocks” law, which would have protected Florida's gun owner privacy rights.”
OMG, Doc, you owe me a new monitor and keyboard. Are you an eye doctor? LMAO!!
That's not entirely true. The law does all of those things, sure, and all of those things are entirely appropriate. But the law also states that doctors "should refrain from making a written inquiry or asking questions concerning the ownership of a firearm . . .," although it does make exceptions for doctors who ask with a "good faith" belief that the question is relevant to medical care or the health/safety of the patient or others. That part of the law strikes me as wholly unnecessary. Given the other protections in the law, as well as the "good faith" exception, what is the purpose of the prohibition? If the doctor can't use the information in any way anyway, what purpose is served by prohibiting the conversation itself? I'm a firm believer that government should have only that power that is necessary - superfluous, unnecessary laws are themselves harmful, because they represent superfluous, unnecessary expansions of government.
Moreover, that section, even with the good faith exception, strikes me as an unnecessary government intervention on the conversations between doctors and patients. First, because the law would likely "chill" even good faith questions; and second, because I don't think it's a proper role of government to go digging around determining whether someone said/asked something in "good faith," and punishing them if they did not.
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