Gun Debate from The Grunt Doc

Check out the Grunt Doc Blog, if you haven't already, probably the most nationally recognised blog in EM. A recent post there about the following Florida debate as posted below led me to comment, and posted at bottom is the comment I made in reply to others. Please see Grunt Doc page for full story.

The National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups had pushed for a much stronger bill that would have precluded doctors, in many cases, from asking patients about whether they own guns. Backers of the measure, sponsored by Sen. Greg Evers, R-Baker, had said patients were being harassed over gun ownership.




But citing the confidentiality of what is said between doctors and patients, and a broader desire to protect other members of patients’ families, doctors had pushed back hard against the bill (SB 432). The issue had promised a fight between two of the most powerful lobbies at the Florida Capitol.



But an amendment adopted before the committee’s vote on Monday would now generally allow doctors to ask questions about gun ownership, as long as the physician doesn’t “harass” the patient, and doesn’t enter the information into the patient’s record without a good reason. That leaves enough room that doctors now support the measure, as does the NRA.



via Doctors, Gun Groups Compromise on Gun Ownership Questions
Sunshine State News



5.doc hog Says:


April 1st, 2011 at 9:42 am

Drug, gang violence, maybe. Kids for sure. Professor Hale, I have no trigger locks either, but that is a standard safety question that can be found in many pediatric text books right there with car seats, toxic materials in home, etc. It is just to allow parents to think about safety, there is no law that says they have to have the locks, and we wouldn’t pursue it any further. Doctors are in a unique place at the crossroads between science and the humanities, and we have always been directly in the “social change lane.” See Howard Dean, Rand Paul, Ron Paul, Jean Paul Marat, Bill Frist, Che Guevera, Anton Chekov, Arthur Conan Doyle, W. Somerset Maugham, William Carlos Williams, Oliver Wendall Holmes, James Mchenry (US Constituition signer), among many, many others. We are an integral part of social change. Like I said, I own multiple guns, and they would have to pry them from my cold dead hands to get them, but we are not talking about gun control here.