Does your doctor have the right to ask if you are a gun owner?

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Apologies belaboring a silly point-- Information in your "dossier" is probably not a vast concern for the average person but long ago when I was a social worker saw instances where little tidbits in records could work against people. If our society follows its trajectory of increasing PC wussification, then certain details may be increasingly a hazard into the future.

Team meetings of psychiatrists deciding the fate of patients-- Psychiatrists and social workers are not malevolent and they honestly try to do the right thing, but the decisions of the "group" may please the zoo keepers more than the residents. Once information gets into the medical records it is often considered "fact" even if loose rules of evidence caused some entries to be made.

Sometimes public housing and other social program bureaucrats have PC attitudes toward firearms. If you ever find yourself in the position of needing their assistance then it is possible you would get a lesser quality of service if they know certain private details.

One client was a very old man living alone in a modest cabin out in Birchwood. He was developing short-term memory loss and not taking care of himself the best. He had great grown kids who tried to get him to move in, but the old man wanted to live and die on his own property. Not in a son's house or a nursing home. I quit the job before learning the ultimate outcome but such things often end up with a folder of records on the judge's desk. The judge decides whether to send the sheriff out to cart the old man to a nursing home against his will. If the judge has an attitude toward guns then that is one more coffin nail against the wishes of the old man.

Some employers are PC toward firearms and it isn't impossible that medical record info can occasionally come into the hands of the boss.

It is increasingly a dossier society. Blue Cross has hired "health coaches" who repeatedly call asking the same questions about what you eat, how you exercise, what medicine you take, yadda yadda. I have a "none of your business" attitude and if the health coach shows on the caller ID I don't answer the phone. If I accidentally pick up the phone and they ask if I have any questions, I say no. If they persist and I'm in a tolerant mood I answer in monosyllables until they get bored and hang up. Or if they are polite enough to ask if I'm busy I tell them yes. I tell them if I have any questions I know how to call them. Don't call me.

Maybe someday if I need an expensive medical procedure the insurance company's star chamber will decide that I'm not a good risk for expensive medical procedures because I have a history of being repeatedly rude to their health coaches.

[Will Carry]

I'm the OP of this thread. These are some of the quotes from TIME magazine that, I feel, are simply not true.

It is the type of propaganda we as responsible gun owners have to deal with.

a gun-rights lobby that is increasingly using its considerable political power to support policies that have little to do with the right to bear arms and needlessly put innocent people at risk.

Residents of Florida have nearly unrestricted freedom to bear arms. They can have them at home, and they can carry them in public provided they conceal them (except in a few places, such as federal buildings or polling places) or show them only briefly in a non-threatening manner.

Because the government does so little to interfere with gun ownership, gun-rights proponents have had to look hard for things to complain about.

Pediatricians routinely inquire about health-and-safety risks to their young patients. That can include whether a child wears a bicycle helmet, whether there are household chemicals or alcohol within reach — and whether there are firearms in the home. More than 3,000 children and teens were killed by guns, and more than 20,000 injured, in recent years, and the rate of child deaths, injuries and suicides is far higher in homes where guns are present.

The fact is, in Florida and nationwide, the basic right to have a gun for self-defense is more secure than it has been in decades.

With that right now well entrenched, however, the gun lobby has increasingly been fighting for principles that elevate gun rights to troubling extremes.

When Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot in January, an attack in which six people were killed and 13 seriously injured, it called attention to high-capacity clips, which allow a gunman with a single handgun to shoot many people very quickly. Using a high-capacity clip, Giffords' assailant fired 31 bullets in rapid succession. Similar clips were used in the Columbine High School shootings, the Virginia Tech attacks and the recent massacre of 68 people at a Norwegian youth camp.

Gun-rights supporters can protect people's ability to use guns for self-protection without fighting for the right to use clips that can kill 31 people at a pop. Or helping terrorists to buy guns.

[EastHipster]

Well....

They are looking at it from the same perspective as asking if anyone smokes in the house.

I would be annoyed if asked by my our doctor. I've left questions blank on forms before.

I just had to fill out a PILE of goofy paperwork for my kid's school.

Questions get dumber every year (and so do the kids!)

[DaveTN]

The court case wasn’t about the 2^nd amendment; it was about the 1^st. The Judge’s ruling was proper to protect our rights.

A Doctor has the right to ask and you have the right to answer in any way you see fit, or not answer at all.

If you refuse to answer him; he has the right to not treat you. Unless it’s an emergency; Doctors aren’t required to treat anyone (that I know of).

Two people that get straight answers to anything they ask; my Doctor and my Attorney.

[Tim Nunan]

See post #29 here: should physicians routinely inquire about guns?