It's a red-letter day for the pro-gun community and boy, are they celebrating the news out of the 11th Circuit. From the NRA to the red-meat blogs, let the word go out: Gun owners don't need to worry any more about those 'nosy' doctors taking away their guns. According to the majority decision written by a judge who was appointed to the Federal bench by Richard Nixon, if a physician in Florida asks a patient whether he owns guns, the physician is violating not only the patient's privacy, he's also not delivering "good medical care."
I thought that how a doctor figured out what to do or say to a patient only became a legal issue if the patient's condition following medical treatment turned worse. And if anyone, including a Federal judge, thinks that a physician can get around the privacy injunctions of HIPAA compliance, better the judge should be laying brick.
Want to make a million dollars in the gun business? Start with two million. The only time gun sales ramp up is when a high-profile shooting creates talk about gun control which provokes all the gun nuts to run into gun shops and buy more guns. Am I saying that the gun industry needs a Sandy Hook from time to time to promote sales? That's exactly what I'm saying. If gun violence really disappeared, the NRA would have a hard time selling the idea that every attempt at reasonable gun restrictions was an attack on our God-given right to defend ourselves with a gun.
The Florida gag law is nothing more than an extension of the attempt to push physicians out of the gun debate because their views on the medical risks of guns were cited by supporters of the Brady bill in 1994. Payback was the NRA's attack on CDC-funded gun violence research, a cynical attempt to silence a professional community whose commitment to patient health required speaking out about the risks of gun access, notwithstanding the fact that patients are always free to reject a physician's advice on any issue related to their health. Judge Tjoflat's statement that a patient is "relatively powerless" and "must submit to a physician's authority" may have been true when he was appointed to the Federal bench 45 years ago, but it's utter crap to promote such nonsense in the current digital age. Or perhaps Tjoflat's never heard of Facebook, Twitter or healthgrades.com.
The 11th Circuit's opinion also refers to the issue of privacy, as if asking a patient about guns is a greater threat to personal well-being than asking about using drugs or tobacco at home. All of a sudden, the NRA-supported dopes who go parading around Starbucks with AR rifles in full view suddenly become so reticent when a physician asks them to talk about their guns. And of course the same jerk who doesn't want to disclose gun ownership to a physician will expect, in fact demand, the right to protect himself from being attacked in the physician's office by bringing along his gun.
The leading medical organizations plus the American Bar Association believe that "deaths and injuries related to firearms constitute a major public health problem in the United States." This consensus is not going to change because some judge thinks that doctors should avoid the issue of guns. It took fifty years to reduce smoking from nearly one out of two adults to one out of five. And along the way there was plenty of talk that tobacco wasn't injurious to health. We hear the same nonsense about guns from the NRA and many well-meaning people believe it to be true. Only it's not, and sooner or later, like the Martians in Area 51, the so-called benefits of gun ownership will be understood for what they are -- nothing other than a way to sell more guns.