You obviously weren’t following closely enough. YogSosoth said that the good thing about this law in Florida is that it will result in more deaths amongst children of “gun nuts.” I was specifically responding to that when I mentioned “people who are all about leaving guns laying all over their house.”
There is a difference, as I have said, between individuals who choose to keep loaded firearms at the ready all throughout their home and the group studied in your linked article. The group was just defined as gun owners in general:
Since the research was focused on all gun owners that were surveyed at a single clinic, and not specifically on gun owners who were committing the most egregious acts of gun nuttery, the article remains irrelevant to what I had said.
I find it amazing you have such difficulty following what was a very simple discussion up to the point you began your attempt to make my arguments for me.
That’s a loaded question. A doctor has a duty to ask me about a family history of diabetes because that is clearly a medical issue. I don’t believe it should be a doctor’s responsibility to ask about every possible home accident waiting to happen. As I have said upthread, I have no problem with a doctor asking about those things–as long as the doctor has no problem with me saying “thanks, but I’m not interested in a home safety questionnaire.”
I don’t believe a doctor would want it to be their responsibility to ask about every possible source of home accidental death, either. You’d probably have to ask around 1,000+ questions just to get every source of accidental death in the United States that claims more than 10 lives per year.
In one instance you have the pharmacist who is refusing to do his job.
In the other, you have an instance in which the pediatrician is attempting to do his/her job.
Are we really debating that a pediatrician’s job is not to council parents on child safety? Really? :smack:
Are really as clueless as this post makes you sound?
The ethical obligation is to take care of the child even if the parent does not bring up the issue. The parent may not be concerned about lead toxicity but it is still my job in a well care check to see if there are any significant risk factors and to advise a screening test if there are. Same with TB exposure. Any contact with those recently released from jail or drug abusers? Or travel to various international areas? Then a TB test is indicated. If no risk factors it is not. If I see suspicious bruising my job is to ask about them whether the parent wants me to or not. I ask lots of uncomfortable questions. Healthcare is often asking about intimiate information. Nothing should be off-limits and it is all private.
A variety of screening questions, which in certain practices in certain communities includes gun ownership and storage, are indeed boilerplate. Well care includes a health risk assessments. Do you you exercise regularly and what do you do? Yes, if sexually active do you wear a condom? If you think that those are none of your doctor’s business then don’t answer, fine. But yes, our understanding of our job includes knowing what health risks our patients are taking and trying to sell them on behaviors that lower their and their families’ risks of death and disability and that may increase their quality of life. And for that matter, the health status of our communities as well.
If someone objects to my asking these questions, if they are coming to me and think that my assessing their health risk status is “none of my business” I would find it very odd and very unusual. And move along. I’ve got other patients to see.
Martin I responded to your post, not Yog’s. Yog seems to think that every gun owner is a “gun nut” so your listed population is the more reasonable one to address than all gun owners.
As to the study and your misunderstanding of it. That particular study found that the number of people who kept weapons loaded and unlocked decreased significantly as a result of the medical intervention. Since you seem to define “gun nuttery” more narrowly that Yog does, to just those who keep weapons loaded and unlocked in the house, then this study shows those “gun nuts” (by your apparent definition) are responsive to intervention. I’d just describe those people as unaware of the full extent of the risks and of how easy it is to lower the risks. I don’t think they are nuts. But YMMV. Again, another study did not show such a robust effect, so I am not positive that intervention always works. Maybe a free gun lock is required to have the effect. Asking that is a reasonable medical question.
I have trouble understanding why education on firearms safety is a step on the slippery slope to gun bans, when the NRA itself stresses firearms safety.
Mrs. J. relates that one time her physician asked if we kept a loaded gun in the house (the answer to which was no, not a loaded gun). She short-circuited the doc’s attempt to warn us about the dangers of gun ownership and that was that. A little irritating but not something necessitating a law to muzzle the doctor.
There are a lot of sensitive subjects which physicians often feel necessary to broach for the health of the patient, dealing with sex, drugs, smoking and various risk
factors. This will make some people annoyed or uncomfortable, but it’s an important part of the job. If in a very few cases patients feel discriminated against based on their answers (or non-answers) there are remedies already on the books to handle this. The slippery slope I don’t want to get onto is banning uncomfortable or inconvenient speech.
It could be a simple as “Do you have gun locks on your guns, a fence around your pool, little plastic widgets for your sockets and a car seat? - if you don’t, there is a program that will supply some of these things”. You don’t have to be Calamity Jane. This law restricts the things you can and can’t bring up.
Hard to say. It might, it might not, I haven’t looked at the research. There’s a metric shit-load of research into recruitment of patients into screening programs for public health type issues - vaccination, pap smears & mammography for examples - which show MD intervention can have a postive effect, and asking what’s most cost effective. This law certainly ensures it won’t happen in this case.
Fair enough, but most MDs that I know - who are generally Canadian, for what that’s worth - have this problem all the time, and strive mightily to be non-judgemental on all the many things that they would like to come out and pontificate about. It ain’t easy trying to improve people’s health practices without alienating them, but that is a lot of what a good doctor tries to do.
That’s great, but that’s not how it’s supposed to work. The MD has an obligation -if possible - to do more than just treat what you come in to complain about. It’s not the same relationship as between you and your hairdresser. While you retain autonomy to make your own decisions, your doctor should, if they can, see if there is anything else going on that needs looking after, and in the case of pediatricians, they have an obligation to the kid that is separate from the obligation to the parents.
I think for many of us it isn’t that we have a problem with you addressing safety issues, I certainly don’t. I don’t think it is out of line (but as I’ve said 10 times now, it isn’t out of line for me to brush you off on those issues) but I do think many of us gun owners fear that it’s a back door way to criminalize all private gun ownership. Argent Towers gave a very important history lesson in this thread. When I was growing up the NRA wasn’t a Charlton Heston lead, firebrand organization. It was almost a Boy Scout esque organization focused on proper use of firearms, holding shooting tournaments and other such things. Then the 1970s came and all of a sudden American cities went from being pretty safe to having massively high crime rates across the board (especially increased murder rates.) This is followed up by a mentally ill guy being able to buy a hand gun which he then uses to shoot the President and seriously wound James Brady. Next thing you know our hobby is blamed for all gun murders in America, it’s blamed for James Brady not being able to walk anymore and all of a sudden we’re *all *red necks, imbeciles, losers that lay in bed feverishly masturbating as we gaze with glazed eyes at our gun collection.
Interestingly since the 1950s rates of firearm ownership have steadily decreased in the United States (although I believe it has increased since 2005 from what I can tell), at the same time the number of firearms owned has dramatically increased since 1950. Even though firearm ownership on an individual basis has been going down since the 1950s, you saw murder rates go up from the 1970s peaking in 1990/1991. Then it started a decline which no one expected, all the way up until the present day. If firearms ownership has been steadily decreasing, and yet during that time murder rates went up for like 20 years, then have been going down for 20 years, what does that say about gun ownership and murder? Well, to me it shows there isn’t much correlation between the two.
Hey, maybe all those murders were caused by something other than the simple fact that we owned guns in this country. No one ever talks about the 50 years before that when a large portion of Americans owned guns and we didn’t have the “crime epidemic” of the 1970s. If guns were the cause of all that crime in the 70s then why didn’t we have similar crime epidemics in the 1950s? The 1930s? The 1910s? The 1990s?
So after we got pushed, the NRA pushed back. Have they gone over the deep end sometimes? Hell yes they have. That’s the way people get when an issue is important to them, that’s the reason there are major marches on the abortion issue, massive anti-war demonstrations and people rioting in the street at WTO meetings.
It does look like society has finally come around though. While some of the far leftists still complain about guns, by and large I think the gun debate is dead for Democrats. It’s literally started to become a third rail–which to me is great, because politicians had no place trying to criminalize ownership of firearms.
I also don’t believe that doctors as a whole are trying to get rid of guns. However, the good intentions of doctors are often used as justification for various bullshit. There is always going to be a certain segment of society that will say “something increases risk of medical problems” so “that thing should be banned or heavily regulated.” All of a sudden people talk about banning fast food, soft drinks, ATVs, motorcycles, alcohol, tobacco, boxing and other contact sports…and the list goes on. I’ve always felt that it is the job of individuals, not society, to decide what risks we are willing to take. If I want to eat myself to an early grave, that’s my right. If I want to drink myself to death, that’s my right. If I want to buy a bunch of heroin and shoot up until I die, I should be allowed to do that. If I want to ride my ATV around on my own private property like a maniac with no helmet until it flips over and snaps my neck, that should be my right.
Now, if I want to drive 120 mph on the highway while stoned and drunk, have target practice with my .30-06 in an apartment building in New York City, have trash can fires in the middle of my living room and various other insane actions that clearly put the rest of society at risk I’m fine with us regulating those things. Cars are dangerous not only to the people driving them but to pedestrians and other people driving cars and other vehicles. That doesn’t mean we should ban cars, it means we should regulate their use, require training, require that the car be kept up to a certain degree so that it isn’t unsafe to operate. I’m fine with all that as long as those regulations aren’t secret attempts to make it so no one can drive a car. With guns, unfortunately regulations increasingly appear to be about banning guns, not about adding common sense regulations to their use.
Many states have started banning .50 caliber rifles. Weapons that are extremely expensive, extremely heavy, difficult to move, difficult to use, and are almost unknown outside of a small group of enthusiasts who shoot the weapons as a hobby. There is a genuine reason to be interested in target shooting with a big .50 cal rifle over other guns, it has nothing to do with penis-size but the big caliber rifle is capable of really, really long shots. It allows someone to push their marksmanship skills to the very limit. Because of their size, cost, difficulty to operate and various other things, .50 caliber rifles are virtually unknown in the world of crime. Yet states like California are working to or have already banned their ownership. There is no justification in the crime statistics for this at all it just comes down to people not understanding something so they think we shouldn’t have a right to do it.
Sorry, no. In the very post of mine to which you responded, the quote from YogSosoth appeared. I made it quite obvious I was addressing “gun nuts”, further I made it obvious that whatever term we’re using for “gun nut” I was specifically talking about “individuals who leave firearms laying all over their homes.”
Since you obviously are having trouble reading your own study, I posted the methodology used. It clearly studied gun owners which could include people who perhaps are engaged in “vanilla firearms safety violations” such as leaving a loaded gun in a night stand under the impression children won’t find it. Basically, there are lots of individuals who store firearms unsafely but don’t engage in the specifically egregious behavior of leaving firearms laying all over their homes. There is a difference between the two, the study showed that intervention helps people who are storing firearms unsafely. However, it does not distinguish between what levels of unsafe storage we’re talking about. It also does not drill down into detail about the households that are engaged in unsafe firearm storage, and thus we can’t talk about specific sub groups. Since it just lumps “all gun owning families that store firearms unsafely” together, it does not address at all my specific hypothesis that:
There is a big difference between people who innocently fail to safely store their firearms, perhaps leaving a loaded gun in their closet or night stand, and someone who has guns laying around their house unsecured.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but the set of “people who are all about leaving guns unsecured around their homes” would, for me me, include people who leave a loaded gun in the nightstand. You upped the ante to “leaving firearms laying all over their homes” later.
Let’s try this another way. I don’t give a fuck what my plumber thinks about my tax situation. Likewise, I don’t give a fuck what my doctor thinks about guns or politics. A doctor is essentially a body mechanic. They exist to patch up whatever is wrong. They have no superior moral insight, no font of wisdom, no reason to look down their snooty noses at people that don’t worship their sacred medical cows. Doctors are there to sew us up, or pass out pills, that kind of thing. Guns are not a medical issue. Doctors have no business opining on either side of the gun issue to a captive audience, ie, their patients. I don’t tell my clients how to vote, either. It’s inappropriate and unprofessional.
I didn’t up the ante, but rather clarified since I detected people were not understanding my point. The key phrase is all about leaving guns unsecured, that to me clearly says we’re talking about people who have made a specific choice to leave unsecured firearms laying around their house.
Someone who has a gun in their nightstand I would not say they are all about leaving guns unsecured, I would just say they have an unsecured gun in their home. Plus, the plural of “gun” being guns, I was talking about individuals who had multiple unsecured guns laying around their house, not someone with a single gun in a nightstand.
I’m wondering if maybe none of you are familiar with individuals who have made a conscious choice to keep 10-15 loaded firearms “at the ready” in every single habitable room of their house so they are always ready for something going down. I personally have met people like this, and they are the individuals I think of when I think “gun nut.” I guess perhaps some of you have not met “that sort” and thus don’t see the clear distinction between those types and people who just have a loaded gun in their nightstand.
I’ve actually had a dermatologist more or less “pitch” a political candidate to me in the exam room after he had completed his exam. Not really here or there, just thought it was worth mentioning.
In all this, I’ve somehow missed your larger point. Are you suggesting that since advice from a doctor would be unlikely to sway these people, that they shouldn’t bother to try with anyone? Because, other than that, I don’t see how this is relevant. I am not being snarky. I am honestly confused.
Let us accept your view. I, as a pediatrician, have no business discussing bike helmet use, which sorts of car restraints are best for what age group or size child, pool safety, the dangers of unsecured guns about a house, how to decrease the risks of teen drug use or smoking, etc. My job is exclusively to be a body mechanic. A mechanic who should not ask about your driving habits at all. Fine. Not reality, but let’s accept it for this discussion.
Should it be against the law for your car mechanic to ask you if you own a gun? Potentially punishable by having their ability to do business taken away from them? Should it be against the law for your priest to, for that matter? With the potential for him to be removed from active priesthood if he does?
And that is delusionally paranoid. And the thought process that is leading the NRA to get this law, restricting one class of people from having free speech about one subject area, against professional guidelines, passed.
As to your insistence that you were only talking about those who literally leave guns literally laying all around their house, because that must be what yog meant when he said “gun nut” … okay. That is a very narrow group of people that even I would call nuts and discussing them in response to yog’s post is so stupid that if I had understood that such was what you meant I by “leaving guns unsecured around their homes” I would indeed have ignored it as too stupid to respond to, like I did yog’s. Happy now. I understand better.
**YogSosoth **said at least he could be glad that the children of gun nuts would be more likely to die because of this proposed law in Florida. My response was that gun nuts aren’t likely to take a doctor’s advice on firearms storage in the first place, so I doubt this law would result in more of their children dying. It would probably result in more children of “non gun nut” gun owners dying.
Perhaps Yog’s definition of gun nut includes “anyone who owns or would like to own a gun” and if so I wasn’t aware of it when I initially addressed him (and that would just make him seem even dumber than he already does to me.)
Well, like I said the NRA has gone off the rails. But it doesn’t come from a place outside of reality, it comes from the last thirty years in which our gun rights have definitely been under attack by the left.
In this case, no I don’t genuinely think physicians are secretly trying to get guns banned. But I do think the situation would make more sense if you saw it from where we’re coming from. Basically from my child hood until I was in my mid 20s gun ownership was not controversial and was accepted as a right of American life, especially rural life. Then all of a sudden a bunch of leftists who live in San Francisco and New York City decided it was time to tell us how to live our lives and ban firearms. Their goals are obvious. In Chicago after the SCOTUS ruled their fascist gun ban unconstitutional they responded with the most oppressive gun regulations in the country, essentially trying to accomplish through a myriad of complex regulations what the SCOTUS prohibited them from doing. So yeah, I do think the paranoia comes from “somewhere real.” I won’t defend it when it takes us places that are zany (like in this case) but I understand where it is coming from, and if the left wasn’t so virulently anti-gun, most likely the amount and scope of paranoia by gun owners would decrease.
I’ve already said you don’t need to respond to any of my posts here, and that such response is not why I’m posting in this thread. Yet you continue to do so.
I think there’s a definite difference between “questions from a pediatrician about ‘guns in the home, safety status thereof’ in the context of a general ‘here’s how you kid-safe your house’ speech”, and “questions from a doctor in general about gun ownership in a context unrelated to the treatment being offered”.
In that the former makes perfect sense, provided “guns” are a topic along with “pools”, “electrical outlets”, and “household chemical storage”, and the latter is ridiculous.
IMHO there’s no compelling reason to make either illegal.
Quite possibly, but I bet you don’t ask that question in your daily practice do you? And yet it is probably much more relevant than “Are there any firearms in your house?”.
I don’t know you, but I have never had a doctor ask if I or anyone in my household was recently released from jail.
I understand what your job is. I also understand that you can not protect every child from every potential hazard. You can address risk factors, which this seems to be about. I am most interested in how the risk factors are addressed.
What is the response when a patient responds in the affirmative to the firearms question? A lecture about the hazards? A pamphlet? Both?
How about if the patient response is negative? Same result from you?
If not, why?
Surely a statistically significant number of patients will answer untruthfully (illegal firearms, persons in the house with felony convictions). Seems these instances may even be a greater statistical risk.
What about patients that may be considering a firearm, or acquire one in the future? Surely they pose a statistical risk as well?
The point that I failed to make clear was simply why ask the question? If the risk is substantial enough to warrant the attention of the medical profession, then shouldn’t all patients be equally informed of the potential dangers?
At least you are honest that you practice social engineering.
So if you had reason to believe that a client was engaged in a behavior that could result in significant legal difficulties down stream, you’d blow that off if they hadn’t specifically brought it up?
Okay, fine, do those things. However, your doctor should reasonably ask about your risky behaviors, and suggest ways to modify them. For instance - “Oh, heroin! Excellent, don’t forget to use a clean needle, here’s a scrip.”
Incidentally, as one of the guys who gets hauled out of bed when someone gets drunk and flips his ATV and breaks his neck, you’re not the only person who’s involved in your decisions. Also, the emergency doc who tries to keep you alive when you have your heart attack, who then has you die under his hands as he does CPR - he thinks he has a stake in this. Take a look a Super Kapowzler’s ‘I flunked CPR thread’ - and shit.
That’s bad. Tell him not too.
Does your mechanic ever ask you whether you do highway miles or local miles? Or whether you go off road? Fuck him, off to the big house with him.
Hell, I once had a mechanic tell me to put a bible in my glove box. I should have thrown him in the slammer myself.
Fuck yeah. Social engineering to help people mitigate obvious dangers. Making guns, pools and bicycle riding safer is totally the first step in the socialist agenda. Where is that sarcastic smiley when you need it.