It’s just a side-effect of mentally grouping all people into either “yay guns, I love guns, guns are awesome!” or “guns are the devil! I want to take your guns!”
If you think that way, then I guess anyone saying anything about guns that is not overtly pro-gun-owning is a sign that they’re in Camp Take-Your-Guns. This is why we can’t have reasonable policy debates in this country.
Did you miss the part where they note that this sort of attitude is widespread? Its their attitude that needs to be changed not my choice of doctor.
It proves an animosity towards guns that supercedes their desire to actually reduce child deaths.
About 3500 kids drown every year. About 30% of all kids age 1 to 4 who died from an unintentional injury died from drowning. http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/water-safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html
Fewer than 20 kids under the age of 4 die from accidental gunshot wounds every year. Broker Version 9.4 (Build 1366)
And yet pediatricians feel the need to ask about guns in the house (merely to distribute information of course) but not pools.
Right, because people who disagree with you must be stupid :rolleyes:
They’re not asking out of concern for my kid, they are asking out an overblown fear of guns. They are asking to imply that I am putting my children at some extraordinary risk by having a gun in the house when they ask about guns but not about pools.
So why not a lecture about pools?
Not if they ask about guns and not pools.
Yes, because they are asking everyone this question. Gun owner and non-gun owner. They are basically teaching everyone that guns are particularly dangerous for kids so some parents who don’t know anything about guns will have the impression that owning guns are somehow irresponsible and bad for children when it is clear that pools are far more dangerous than guns. They are giving me all sorts of warnings and precautions about having guns in the home and they never did that with my pool. They even advise getting rid of guns in the home, they never advised cementing over my pool.
Its this sort of overblown animosity towards guns that makes the gun lobby wary about “medical research” on gun violence.
My issue is that they are demonizing gun ownership as bad parenting when they highlight gun ownership but not pool ownership. Its not just the dispensation of information, there is an attitude like I’m keeping loose rattlesnakes as pets in the house.
Well, my complaint is: why a lecture about guns and not pools?
They are not neutral about guns.
[quote=“kayaker, post:77, topic:653578”]
NPR just did a piece about how varied physician’s opinions are about guns.
Its not just “don’t have guns in the home,” which would be bad enough. Its: “talk to the parents of other children who have guns int the home”
They overblow the risk associated with guns and it undermines their credibility.
Thats why you have articles like this:http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/130/5/e1416.full
But I can’t find an article where pediatricians support banning pools. With pools they just advocate things like fences and teaching kids how to be safe in a home with a pool (learning to swim). With guns, they advocate banning guns as much as possible, telling parents not to have guns, and telling them to find out if their kids friends have guns in the house and talking to the parents of those kids.
Did I say jackbooted thugs or do you read that into the posts of everyone you disagree with.
I know that any anti-gun position is likely not to upset you because it is one of the rights you don’t care about because it doesn’t directly affect you but you should care. The sanctity of any of the rights depends on the sanctity of all the rights, without that, the bill of rights is just a siggection subject to popular opinion. Repeal the second amendment if you can, but treating the second amendment like the red headed stepchild of the bill of rights only opens the door for treating other rights (say the right to privacy and choice) the same way when they become unpopular.
Or its because of the published positions of the AAP.
Obviously many people giving this advice have never lived in a small town where there is one GP, perhaps not even a pediatriciain and the nearest town is an hour away [or in the case of many western states several hours away. ] When you work a minimum wage job during normal business hours and have no effective vacation time, managing to get a kid to an appointment out of town becomes effectively impossible [especially if you do not happen to have a vehicle because you live in a town small enough that you walk everywhere to save money by not paying for gas and insurance for a vehicle.]
Being poor sucks, being poor in a rural community without a ‘personal support system’ [ie family and friends who can give rides or babysit or even run your kids to the doctor for you] sucks more.
And if that small town pediatrician that was hard to avoid asked if you had guns in the house, it’d be worse than living in an Islamo-fascist regime.
In my ER it’s a mandatory check box on every adult pt, same as smoking. I’m not ashamed to say that I pencil whip that on some of my pts, toothache? Migraine? Pulled you out of a burning car, did they?
On Topic, I rail against nanny state stuff sometimes, but I was at a peds conference recently where they claimed a 50% reduction in accidental child deaths since the 80’s. Car seats, bike helmets, pool safety. Fifty fucking percent; trust me, dead kids suck.
OP, did they actually try to discourage you from owning a gun, or just establish safety? Big difference.
An assistant at my kids’ pediatrician asks those questions: Exercise? Seat belts? Guns? Helmets when riding bikes? And they do have free bike helmets, too, and I believe you can also get a free car seat if you need one for your little one.
My gyno, and the nurses when I went to the hospital to have babies, always ALWAYS sent my husband out with paperwork and used the alone-time to ask me if I was afraid of him or if he was abusive.
Standard stuff. Why get your panties in a twist?
Twisting panties is a constitutional right! How dare you try to take away my freedums!
Here’s a fun fact: for the purpose of demonstrating that drowning is more common than accidental shootings, you define “kids” as “under 14” for the drowning part, and “under 4” for the shooting part. That’s some pretty egregious bullshit right there.
They are certainly asking out of concern for your child’s safety, jesus. Guns are dangerous for kids if they’re not stored safely. How is that a fucking mystery to you?
Where do you live? Because in Florida you will certainly get a discussion about pool safety. In Colorado, not so much.
So are you pissed that they asked about guns, or pissed that they didn’t ask about pools? If they asked you about pools and guns, would you still have your panties in a wad about “mah rights!”
Yeah, you’ve been successful at suppressing all fact collecting regarding guns for decades now, so we are all forced to collectively bury our heads in the sand so people like you can go on the internet and bitch about a pediatrician trying to help you better secure your weapons so your kid doesn’t get shot. :rolleyes:
Guns aren’t pools.
Because guns aren’t pools.
All the AAP cites say “it’s best not to have guns around children, but if you do, keep them safely stored”. That’s not ridiculous except to you, apparently.
Because guns aren’t pools. And they don’t say “ban guns”, they say “if you have them, store them safely”.
Nope, pretty much what I said.
Technically, no, although DA did carve off “zero to 1”. No mention of “14”.
I remember an obstetrician treating my wife approaching me alone and asking didn’t I care about her health, that she could die.:smack:
I was like are you fucking crazy? I’m not the one encouraging her to take the baby to term/viability she is. If you think I haven’t been worried about her health and only care about the baby you’re nuts, second of all if I do anything other than honor her wishes she will murder me(well not really but yea you know).
Nah but seriously she decided she was putting the baby ahead of her health, I disagreed but I wasn’t going to go against her wishes either.
Look at the links. The CDC number defines children from 1-14.
I was asked a variation of that when I was just at the ER getting my dislocated shoulder fixed.
From the American Academy of Pediatrics:
http://www.pediatricassociatesnh.com/uploads/Water%20Safety.pdf
So those are the only two options. Either I think all the wommenfolk should be soundly thrashed every fortnight to keep 'em in line, whether they need it or not, or else I’m a “most and quivery” bundle of sobs pining for a mythical golden age of yore, when men and women held hands and sang hymns together night and day before expressing their deep and mutually respectful love for one another.
See, here I thought that maybe I could just think that it sucks that domestic abuse is such a common issue that hospitals need to take this action, while at the same time not being so hopelessly naive and ignorant as to think that men beating women is a whole new thing that’s the result of, I don’t know, fluoride in the water or exposure to cell phone rays. Yes, OBVIOUSLY this has been a huge problem since pretty much day one of humanity. Why does that mean I can’t pause for a moment and think, “Man, that sucks” when my wife gets that question before moving on with my life? Apparently, though, that’s not an option. I guess I best go whittle myself a switch and lay into the little darlin’ like my daddy done taught me.
I really don’t have a dog in this fight, having little interest in obtaining a gun or a kid, but what the hell is this word, I’m curious?
They encouraged me to get rid of my guns. The pamphlet notes that the safest home is a home without guns, not a home without pools or a home without rat poison, a home without guns.
Hmm, OK maybe they do it in some places, I’ve never heard of it and I think they take blue cross.
They asked if he was riding a tricycle (with a helmet) but they didn’t ask in the same way that they asked about guns in the home. They got this look of concern on their face about the guns safely stored in the gun safe that they didn’t have about my three year old riding a tricycle without a helmet.
/sigh If thats the way you see it then here:
in 2009, of the 114 accidental deaths of children, 66 were in the 15-19 year category leaving 48 in the 14 and under category. Compare that to 3500 accidental drownings of children under 14 every year.
If they were concerned about his safety then they would ask about pools. If they were so concerned about safety then they would spend at least as much energy evangelizing against pools as they do against guns but they don’t. They are concerned about a threat that they have overblown in their own minds.
Northern Virginia. We live in a neighborhood with lots of pools.
It depends on how they asked. And its not about Mah Rights. Its about an animosity and demonization of something that claims 66 children under 14 in accidnetal death (to the point of suggesting you get rid of them) compared to soemthing that claims 3500 children under 14 in accidental deaths where they don’t even mention it and I don’t think they generally suggest anyone cement over their pool.
We haven’t been suppressing “ALL” fact collecting for decades, we have been suppressing the CDC (and other members of the medical establishment) from conducting gun “research” In the meanwhile Hemenway at Harvard, the Department of Justice, and the CDC has certainly been gathering data or have you been missing the links to the CDC site on gun deaths? The CDC ban is a lot narrower than you think even if it has had the effect of chilling gun research at the CDC generally.
Yeah, pool are more dangerous.
Yeah, pools are a LOT more dangerous.
Maybe you should read the cites again.
Read the other cites and tell me if you think they are neutral or even objective on guns (heck they may seem objective to you but I doubt you are objective on guns either (no offense)).
Read the cites. They say they want to ban guns. And pools are ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more dangerous than guns to a child.
Nope, not really. Read the cites.
I hope that the additional data has convinced you. After all, when confronted with new data, you are allowed to change your opinion… assuming you are not immune to data.
Maybe thats from the AAP but thats not the pamphlet they gave me.
Suggestion.
What do you mean, “maybe it’s from the AAP”? It has the AAP name and logo right on the document. Do you think that Captain Amazing photoshopped it on there, or what?
PS: Your “quote two lines, respond, quote another line, respond” style of posting is really annoying to read, if you care. If you want to respond to multiple posters, maybe just put all the quoted posts one after the other at the top, then all of your responses together below. Like:
Poster A, I found your use of the simple period very refreshing. Poster B, I think you’ll find that your question was sufficiently answered in Poster A’s OP. Poster C, the use of the semicolon was bold, but I think it really worked.
There should be Razzies for Pit threads at the end of the year.
Words fail. OP, do yourself and listen to your pediatrician. He gave you a friendly reminder about gun safety. You should be thankful. There’s no reason at all for the anger. None. A gun is a deadly fucking weapon and kids kill themselves with it all the time.