Evergreen State gun owners who have been alarmed about questionnaires in doctors’ offices that inquire about guns in the home might want to check what’s going on in Florida’s Legislature right now, and wonder how the same matter might be handled in Olympia.
I have seen such questionnaires here in Washington State, and even written about one case down in the Vancouver area. The argument against such questionnaires is pretty straightforward: Unless a physician is also a certified firearms instructor, he/she has no business asking about guns in the home or offering advice on home firearms safety, gun storage or whether someone should even own a gun.
At issue is HB 155, a Florida measure that would slap heavy fines and even jail time on physicians who ask about the presence of firearms in the homes of patients, what Dr. Timothy Wheeler with Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership calls a “boundary violation.” Marion Hammer, executive director of the Unified Sportsmen of Florida and the first female president of the National Rifle Association, is openly critical of such boundary violations.
Physicians who try to define firearms as a health care issue and counsel their patients against owning guns are, according to Hammer, practicing politics.
It’s not just doctors’ offices that practice this quiet form of anti-gun bigotry. Hospitals, including Seattle’s Harborview, Tacoma General and Bellevue’s Overlake prohibit firearms on the premises.
Statistically, they don’t need firearms in hospitals to rack up a body count. Google Dr. Barbara Starfield with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. More than ten years ago, she published results of a study that shook up the medical community. Her findings indicated that an estimated 225,000 medically-caused deaths occur in the United States annually from such things as giving the wrong medications to performing unnecessary surgeries. She did an interview last year with John Rappaport that appeared on his blog and again on Mathaba.net that reiterated her findings. The annual number of firearms-related deaths pales by comparison, average around 32,500.
· 12,000 deaths from unnecessary surgeries;
· 7,000 deaths from medication errors in hospitals;
· 20,000 deaths from other errors in hospitals;
· 80,000 deaths from infections acquired in hospitals;
· 106,000 deaths from FDA-approved correctly prescribed medicines.
The total of medically-caused deaths in the US every year is 225,000.—Mathaba.net
Firearms instructors do not habitually practice medicine. Yet the American Academy of Pediatrics posts the following advice about Keeping Kids Safe from guns:
- Do not purchase a gun, especially a handgun.
- Remove all guns present in the home.
- Talk to your children about the dangers of guns, and tell them to stay away from guns.
- Find out if there are guns in the homes where your children play. If so, talk to the adults in the house about the dangers of guns to their families.
Yes, by all means, make children paranoid and ignorant about firearms. Raise them to become gun prohibitionists.
This column wants to hear from you, below. Have you ever been asked by a doctor, especially a pediatrician, about firearms in the home?
All of this might be avoided if everyone had a doctor like mine. He’s a member of my gun club out in Snoqualmie, and is something of an AR-15 aficionado. He would never ask me about guns in the home. He already knows.
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Comments
As a health care provider and a shooter, I think the last thing we need is yet another law dictating practice.
I agree that providers untrained in firearms have no business lecturing patients on firearms safety.
Rather than throwing the provider in jail, how about if the patient talks to the provider about the offensive language. I would suggest that opening a dialogue rather than a jail cell might be more helpful. If we go armed with facts, we might be able to create a convert.
Evidence-based medicine is what most of us have been practicing for years, despite what grandstanding politicians think. Presented with new evidence we change our practice. This was the case for me and my views on firearms.
Dare I also mention that resurrecting the statistics about medical misadventures do not help to open the ears of providers. Your argument about most providers not being firearms safety experts is valid. Don't stifle the discussion by claiming expertise in health care safety.
'NW Shooter'
Nowhere in my column do I pretend to be an expert on health care safety.
Instead, I quote from, and refer to someone who is.
I haven't endorsed the Florida effort. I am merely wondering how this issue would be addressed in Olympia.
"Resurrecting" statistics about medical misadventures appears to have gotten your attention.
My reaction exactly. Laws that limit what a professional can say to his clients are pretty obviously unconstitutional and we don't further our libertarian (small-L) cause by promoting such things. The answer is not a law, but as you say, a conversation. If the conversation is fruitless, you vote with your feet and find another doctor.
And I agree that a cheap shot about medical mistakes is not helpful to dialog on the issue we care about. Not only is it a red herring, it also insults people we would hope to convert. Not sure why so many gun rights proponents instinctively go in that direction, but I think it's really counter-productive.
Great article Dave. Thanks for the incite on the AAP.
It is decidedly good medicine to own guns, better medicine to routinely carry one - it's like a pound of prevention.
I have and will continue to inoculate children against to false fears and lies of others. My children and grandchildren are properly educated.
Doctors as a group have not the training, expertise nor knowledge to speak with any authority on this matter - seems like malpractice to me - that is something they will understand.
I have been hoping I would get a questionaire with this kind of question on it because I have one of two responses prepared.
Do you have guns in your home?
Ans 1: What does this have to do with my health care? I am offended that this question is on this form and that you are taking away from the focus of determining if there is something amiss about my physiology (sp?) If this question is not removed I will be forced to find another doctor.
Ans 2: Yes. I have over 35 guns in my home and thousands of rounds of ammunition. In fact, I have a firearm in a holster on my belt at this moment. I also have a colapsable baton, OC spray and three knifes on my person. I am a member of SAF and the NRA where I actively voice my support and work to insure 2nd Amendment rights as much as I am able. Are you really sure you want to bring up this topic with me?
"Unless a physician is also a certified firearms instructor, he/she has no business asking about guns in the home or offering advice on home firearms safety, gun storage or whether someone should even own a gun."
I would go further and say that even if a physician IS a certifed firearms instructor - he still has no business making these inquiries and suggestions.
So far I've never been asked anything about firearms from my doctors.
"And I agree that a cheap shot about medical mistakes is not helpful to dialog on the issue we care about....Not sure why so many gun rights proponents instinctively go in that direction, but I think it's really counter-productive."
It may not be helpful in making the physician sympathetic, but maybe it shows them how stupid and offensive _their_ wrong-headed statement about firearms and health is to the patient? If a physician can tell me a firearm is bad for my health because of the behavior of a small percentage of criminals in the US, why is it inapplicable for me (or anyone else) to attribute to them the the incompetence of a small percentage of doctors? Two wrongs don't make a right, but if an analogy is what they need....
I agree with a couple of other posters that the comments about the medical treatment related death study diminsh the effectiveness of the article. However, I would not call them off-topic or a cheap shot.
I have never been asked such a question. Were I, I would simply tell the provider that he could infer my answer from the fact that our relationship was at an end.
I find no place in the Doctors Office to be a valid discussion or Inquirers as to the possession, storage, safe handling, or anything related to a weapon of any kind. Weapons in the home are not subject to AMA certifications to become a Doctor. Therefore any question about them in a patients home or other location totally inappropriate.
God Bless Marion Hammer!
Truth be known, Marion Hammer is an exceptional leader among the most intelligent, knowledgeable, skilled, dedicated and effective defenders of the Right To Keep And Bear Arms alive today.
If doctors want to educate people on health-related issues, fine. Electricity, chemicals, swimming pools, bathtubs, fire, ladders, choking, slippery surfaces, sharp instruments, stray alligators, TV sitcoms, mainstream moron indoctrination programs and repeatedly serving bad tasting meat-loaf dinners...are all known hazards to personal safety, health, mental well-being and peaceful marital relationships.
It’s entirely reasonable, however, to not only expect but demand that all people of science provide only accurate, reliable, valid and verifiable information.
If health-care professionals want to provide patients with information on firearms, the NRA is the best source there is, including one for children under the Eddie Eagle GunSafe® Program.
Citing false stats and propagandizing about firearms doesn’t do anyone any good. For doctors, of all people, to do so is an unacceptable betrayal of trust and diminishes the status of the entire profession.
Legislation is never a viable substitute for Morality or absence of Conscience, but in this circumstance the legislation proposed is in response to unethical conduct on the part of licensed professionals, thus valid on principle.
Yes, I have been asked, and so has my wife. My children were asked as well. We simply refused to answer any question that was not directly related to our or our childrens health, and then found other doctors. We learned from that point to check around first.
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