The Case Against Florida’s Docs-Can’t-Ask-About-Guns Law
See the law’s summary here. This is Aaron Carroll at his blog:
I ask parents regularly if they have a gun in the home. If they tell me they do, I ask how it’s stored. I recommend that they think about not having a gun around children. If they must, I recommend that they keep it unloaded, locked up, with the bullets stored separately.
Why? Because in 2005, guns were in involved in almost 85% of homicides and more than 45% of suicides in children aged 5-19 years, not to mention many accidents. I ask about guns because they are a major mechanism of childhood death. I’m trying to prevent that from happening.
If he is interpreting the law correctly, I agree with him. But I’m not sure he is.
Asking questions like this of children separated from their parents during medical exams has been best practice for a decade thanks to people in favor of gun control who claimed that they should be treated like a disease. Go Florida!
In my opinion, this is none of the good doctor’s business, especially in an era in which medical records are required to be shared with vast government bureaucracies. Children should be taught to refuse to answer or to supply meaningless nonsense. The same goes for the questions about whether their parents fight a lot or whether they or their friends are involved in illegal activities like alcohol of illegal drug consumption, and reckless driving.
Kids can be very creative in answering invasive survey questions that violate personal boundaries once they learn the game.
The research suggests that guns in the home reduce one’s risk of death or injury, and vital statistics show that firearms are less risky for children than water and cars. In 2006 a total of 54 children aged 1 to 14 died in firearms accidents, 765 drowned, and 2,067 died in motor vehicle transport accidents.
Physicians don’t have any particular expertise in the kind of social pathology that generates most of the firearms deaths. They might more profitably spend their time treating actual diseases. A total of 41 children in this age group died from diabetes, 64 died ofrom complications of medical and surgical care, 176 died from kidney failure, 194 died from pneumonia, 441 died from septicemia, 1,360 died from cancer, and 1,089 died from cardiovascular disease.
There were 219 suicides in the 0-14 age group, 62 were committed using firearms. There were 807 homicides, 285 were committed using firearms. We don’t know if adults were using them. The statistics that people in favor of controlling other people’s lives quote always include the 15-24 year olds to up the death rate. They ignore the fact, and hope you will too, that people that old are perfectly capable of defeating locks and reuniting guns and bullets.
Wasn’t there an analysis recently comparing gun ownership in the home with swimming pool accidents? As I recall, children were far more likely to be harmed by pools. Still, it makes sense to secure guns in the home. Adults don’t realize the attraction kids have to guns (including toy guns) and that kids lack the judgment to handle them safely unless taught. Yet, I’m not sure a doctor asking parents about guns in the home will do any good.
I’m with Linda.
Childhood deaths via accidental gunshot wounds are much hyped, but not necessarily as common as one might think. I don’t see any reason why a physician should not be allowed to ask about gun ownership. But, I also don’t see a reason why it’s really necessary except in unusual situations.
Good comment, Linda.