{"id":65094,"date":"2016-04-04T08:19:30","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T12:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=65094"},"modified":"2016-04-04T08:49:49","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T12:49:49","slug":"why-your-kids-doctor-needs-to-know-if-you-own-a-gun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=65094","title":{"rendered":"Why your kid\u2019s doctor needs to know if you own a gun"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post prints an opinion piece n their pages by Angelica Zen and Alice Kuo, a doctor and a professor, entitled Do you own a gun? Why your kid\u2019s doctor needs to know.<\/a> Typically, the authors assume that you’re a boob and that a doctor and a professor know more about guns, storage of said guns, storage of ammunition and general gun safety than you know. They start from a point would have been inconceivable eight years ago – being that gun ownership is a public health care issue. <\/p>\n

Last month, I had to jump through my ass to find a doctor willing to sign a piece of paper which said that I was fully capable of driving with my disability. It didn’t ask doctors whether I could parallel park, but if I was medically capable of driving without going into a coma. I couldn’t find a doctor willing to sign it because they were afraid that they would be held liable for any accidents that might occur. Now they want to inject themselves into the gun debate? How does that liability look?<\/p>\n

In 2011, after a lobbying push by the National Rifle Association, Florida passed the Firearm Owners\u2019 Privacy Act, restricting physicians from asking about gun ownership and from counseling about gun safety in routine appointments. Potential penalties include fines, suspension and loss of a medical license. A federal judge blocked the law as an unconstitutional restriction of doctors\u2019 speech. Then an appeals court panel overturned the ruling, emphasizing patients\u2019 rights to own guns and to privacy.<\/p>\n

This Florida case is just the latest example of how the politics of guns have affected physicians\u2019 ability to bring science to bear on what experts can see plainly: That gun violence is a public health issue. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, well, there’s the problem – it’s not a public health issue – it’s a public safety issue. There have been a number of tragic incidents recently in which toddlers were able to injure people with firearms, the good doctor and the professor make mention of some of them in their article. But they were not incidents that doctors would have been able to predict or interceded in given an opportunity to question their patients as to their gun ownership. Doctors are no better than anyone else in discussing gun safety.<\/p>\n

It’s like teachers thinking that they have a responsibility to teach kids to put condoms on bananas – just because they have a lot of classroom education, that doesn’t make them experts on everything under the sun. If states want to require a gun safety program for gun owners, well, that’s fine, but authorizing doctors to question their patients about guns will only cause mistrust in that relationship, like there is not enough mistrust in that relationship already.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post prints an opinion piece n their pages by Angelica Zen and Alice Kuo, … Why your kid\u2019s doctor needs to know if you own a gun<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}