Pushing back against the National Rifle Association, a group of physicians on Monday filed suit in a Miami federal court to nullify a controversial measure prohibiting health practitioners from routinely asking their patients if they own guns and have them properly stored.
In a battle pitting the First Amendment against the Second Amendment, attorneys representing pediatricians and family doctors are asking U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke to throw out the recently approved measure (HB 155) they say steps illegally between a patient and their physician by limiting the types of questions practitioners can ask.
The complaint, filed in the Southern District of Florida, contends that prohibiting what physicians and their patients can talk about is unconstitutional.
Continue reading at the Miami Herald
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Why does a doctor need to know if a patient owns a gun? Is this a foreshadowing of Obongo care?
that is what I’d like to know too. Our Pediatrician just started asking us this in the last few years.
I would refuse to answer. What can they do to you.
While I certainly believe it is none of their damn business, I do find it hard to believe that a law can be written to prevent one private person from saying anything to another private person. But then, they are licensed by the state to practice health care, so maybe they have some say in that regard.
However, I do think they could pass a law banning the release of any info on gun ownership, and a law to include a statement in the privacy notice that there is no requirement for any patient to answer any questions regarding firearm ownership.
Gov’t will have access to healthcare databases that the doctors use. Gun ownership question will likely be part of that database if this law wasn’t put in place now.
I understand that. And as I said in my second paragraph, I don’t see why they couldn’t have a law to ban the release of a particular type of info. Maybe a law to ban keeping record of such info. There has to be a way to keep that info suppressed and segregated from the general health records without outright banning the discussion of such.
And realistically, I don’t believe this law was passed as a way to keep gun info out of a database as much as it was to prevent a doctor from taking such info and giving it to the authorities simply because the doctor is anti-gun. If that was the reason, why not just ban government access to health records altogether?
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With doctors having so little time to
spend with their patients, how do they find time to ask questions
that are none of their business? If they have a true concern about
household safety conditions for the pediatric patients, they should
have a handout printed that will caution parents to keep things safe
around the house.
I don’t know where else (besides
Florida) this is happening but I smell big brother’s body odor here.
It might just be another method of finding out who has guns in the
home for confiscation purposes.
Doctors have enough trouble chasing symptoms with drugs to have time to worry about this. Last I checked, doctors and hospitals were the 4th leading cause of death in the US. Maybe a doctor should ask how many doctors the patients have stored in their homes.
Why can the patient just tell the doctor none of your business and that be the end of it. Why do we need a law for that.
Guess you haven’t kept up on what started this. A doctor asked a parent about guns in the house. Parent refused to answer. Doctor told parent to find another doctor within a few months. AAP policy is no guns in homes.
That would seem to me to be a good way to cull out a doctor with an agenda.
Amen to JS, I just lost my sister because of a darn doctor, I have been 3 years at Johns Hopkins and now Drexel and they still are lost. My local Doctor finally gave me some patches for inflamation and guess what the pain is going away. 500,000 spent last year alone on this problem and my local Doctor came up with at least something to help the pain. JH diagnosed PLS another Doctor ALS and everything in between. Ban Doctors buy Guns
No one is obligated to answer any questions a Doctor asks, especially if it’s none of their business.
Well said.
A legitimate reason why pediatricians should be able to ask parents about presence of guns in the home? Because some kids are not mentally healthy, and some kids don’t inhibit impulses to hurt others. And if those kids have access to guns, sometimes they use them. It is the moral obligation of the pediatrician to remind a parent of such an at risk chld to make it harder for that kid to have access to a weapon.
Gun laws rightfully include the restriction not to sell to someone mentally ill. The logic behind that restriction also applies to someone who doesn’t have to buy a gun because they already potentially have access to one. Right?
Imagine how the lives of so many others would be different now if a doctor had perhaps been more diligent in cautioning responsible adults to limit weapons access to these troubled youth: Jared Laughner; Eric Harris; Dylan Klebold; Mitchell Johnson; Andrew Golden; etc.
Am I in favor of more restrictive gun laws that apply to responsible citizens? Not at all. No way. My guns, my business, and none of yours.
But for goodness sake, don’t assume that kind of freedom should apply to kids who have not demonstrated the maturity of responsible gun access. And don’t begrudge pediatricians who may see a need to remind those responsible adults to not be complacent about children’s access to guns, espeially if those kids show signs of poor impulse control, or worse.
It is NOT the “Moral Obligation” of a physician to ask such questions. The only “Moral Obligation” a physician has is to first do no harm, and to treat their patient in an ethical manner.
I’m all for repealing this law because I don’t like laws standing between me and my patients.
I’m an ardent support of the NRA, but to support a law prohibiting a physician from talking to their pateint about any subject is pure stupidity.
The only doctor I could see a as having a “moral obligation” to ask such questions is a psychologist. Still, it is the client’s prerogative to answer truthfully or not.
A psychologist is not an MD or DO. They cannot prescribe drugs etc.. So why should they be interested in gun ownership?
People complain that they do not want to answer police. Now a doctor believes he should have more rights than law enforcement. No way. I have many doctors as friends and none of them answered yes to my question of them asking about gun ownership. Only a few nosey quacks would ask a patient about their guns.
What a load of BS. If any of my doctors asks me, they will never see me as a patient again.
Let the doctor ask whatever he wants. If he asks me if I have guns, I will simply lie and say “of course not”.
My wife just had our 2nd kid and she was asked the same question. Furthmore, what does that question have to do with what your there for? I can understand if it was a “gun” incident, but if your going to get a normal check up or u break your leg what relevance does it have?? just another way the government is snooping in on our lifes. There are other issues that could be addressed in the nation than asking us “that question”.
I would refuse to answer that question. If they do not like it just get another Doctor. Doctors are a dime a dozen.