Fla: Docs vs. Glocks

[mominatrix]

this has me all confused. Apparently, in Florida, it's ILLEGAL for a kids' doctor to ask you about guns in the home... but it's REQUIRED for doctors to perform ultrasounds (and "offer" the looking of them) of women who want abortions. 


which makes me all





Somebody's gonna have to explain to me how the bolded, below, doesn't apply to laws governing how a doctor counsels women seeking abortions.

=======================================



The Bloodshed State

Doctors in Florida cannot legally protect children from guns.



By Mark Joseph Stern






Earlier this year, a Lake Worth, Florida, resident left his loaded gun sitting out on a table by the front door while he dressed for work. He heard a loud noise and ran into the hallway, where he discovered his daughter lying in a pool of blood with a bullet hole through her head. She was 3 years old. After her death from the accidental, self-inflicted gunshot, a neighbor told reporters he was stunned, claiming: “This kind of stuff doesn’t happen here.”




But this kind of stuff does happen in Florida—far more often than you’d think. In 2013 alone, at least 17 children in the state were killed by guns, and myriad more were wounded. These tragedies are part of a spiraling, nationwide epidemic of gun violence toward children, which includes a horrifyingly high number of absolutely preventable accidental shootings. A responsible state would pass and enforce gun safety laws to keep firearms away from children. But Florida did the opposite: The state passed a law gagging doctors from asking patients about guns, effectively preventing doctors from sharing safety tips to keep those guns out of children’s hands.



The gag law, nicknamed the Docs vs. Glocks law by its detractors, was passed by an overwhelmingly Republican Legislature brimming over with money from NRA lobbyists. It would seem to be an obvious First Amendment violation: For asking a patient a question that could save his child’s life, a doctor in Florida could lose her medical license or be fined $10,000. The state has no rational—let alone compelling—interest in censoring doctors from asking this basic question, much less preventing doctors from making evidence-based recommendations about public health and safety. And the law is so broad and vague that even an indirect inquiry could potentially qualify as illegal “harassment of a patient regarding firearm ownership.”



My home state was once a bastion of moderate pragmatism; today, it’s a laboratory of legalized violence.



On Friday, however, two Republican-appointed judges on an 11th Circuit panel upheld the law as constitutional, insisting that the gag order was merely a reasonable “regulation of professional conduct.” In the eyes of the majority, gun ownership—even among parents of young children—is “a private matter irrelevant to medical care,” and even an innocuous question about gun safety “is not part of the practice of good medicine.” Accordingly, the act is a perfectly valid use of state power to protect gun owners from having their privacy invaded by pesky doctors. Never mind about protecting children from accidentally shooting themselves with those guns; the real threat here, the court suggests, is that a gun owner might once have to hear his doctor tell him to keep his shotgun away from his toddler.



In the court’s view, in fact, gun owners are a disfavored, discriminated-against minority, desperately in need of protection from judgmental doctors with a liberal agenda. The majority implies that when doctors ask questions about gun safety, they’re really just pushing their own anti-gun views on their patients. And the state has every interest in shielding patients from this phantom peril: “It is no exaggeration,” the court writes, “to state that a patient may be in some cases essentially at the mercy of his or her physician.” In response to the dissent’s suggestion that patients might simply refuse to answer a doctor’s question about guns, the majority scoffs that “when patients are in examining rooms, they may feel powerless … [and] that their physicians demand an answer.”



The horror of this possibility, to the court’s mind, far outweighs the horror of child gun deaths. Indeed, from the majority opinion, you’d never guess that accidental child shootings ever occur in Florida, so casually does it dismiss the epidemic that pediatricians are now banned from attempting to remedy. For these two conservative judges, protecting gun owners from having to hear (but not answer) a question about gun safety is far more important than protecting children from accidentally shooting themselves or one another.



How did it come to this? How did Florida, a perennial swing state with a healthy center-left bloc, become the first victim of the NRA’s heinous crusade against pediatricians? My home state was once a bastion of moderate pragmatism; today, it’s a laboratory of legalized violence. A Tea Party­–controlled Legislature has turned Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s reign into an autocracy, where conservative special interest groups like the NRA are free to test out their new, often savage schemes on the populous. From guns to the death penalty to voting rights and health care, Republicans have systematically pushed through new policies that endanger or degrade all but the most wealthy and powerful Floridians. They’ve followed the money and brutalized the state, transforming it from a sunny vacation spot to a dangerous, uncivilized sump.



I left Florida before this revolution began, and I used to think I might move back one day. Not any more. A state where black kids can be legally shot down, where pediatricians cannot even encourage their patients to lock up their guns—this is no place to raise children and have a family. For a while, Florida’s combination of weird news and reactionary politics made it the laughingstock of the nation. But the laughing has stopped now. And what’s left in its wake is the dreadful realization that, in their effort to turn the state into a far-right paradise, Republicans have created a hell on earth.



www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/07/docs_vs_glocks_upheld_florida_pediatricians_forbidden_from_asking_patients.html?wpsrc=fol_tw

[orangeblossom]

So ridiculous.

[Deleted]

You are not really surprised are you? The government is supposed to stay out of everything except our uteruses.

[greeneggs]

This might be the first time in the history of ever that another state would be more fucked up than Texas about their gun loving ways. I've been asked at every well child appointment since birth if we have guns in the home and if so how are they stored. I really don't see why this is any more invasive than asking what your kid eats for breakfast and which way his car seat faces.

[irishbride2]

My doc asks every time

[Deleted]

[penguingrrl]

I've never had a doc ask, but for the first five years I had kids we were in NYC then the next two years we were in a part of NJ where gun owners are rare. I have a feeling that now that we're in PA it will be asked.

[irishbride2]

The only reason I even notice they ask is because my uncle is their doctor. And every single time I make a comment about how we will never have guns and he says that he HAS to ask. And we live in Florida.

So now I'm worried he will get in trouble!

[iamali]

www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages/American-Academy-of-Pediatrics-Condemns-Ruling-Against-Physicians%E2%80%99-Right-to-Counsel-on-Firearm-Safety.aspx

American Academy of Pediatrics Condemns Ruling Against Physicians’ Right to Counsel on Firearm Safety
7/28/2014
Article Body


Ruling by Appellate Court threatens physicians’ ability to counsel parents about firearm safety, putting children’s lives at risk


​ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL (July 28, 2014) -- The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to uphold a "physician gag law" in Florida violates the First Amendment rights of pediatricians and threatens their ability to counsel parents about how to protect children from unintentional injury and death.

In its July 25, 2014 ruling, the court reversed the June 2012 decision of U.S. District Judge Marcia G. Cooke of the Southern District of Florida-Miami, who ruled in the favor of the Florida chapters of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), and the American College of Physicians (ACP) and individual plaintiff physicians and issued an injunction against enforcing the 2011 Florida law restricting physician firearms safety counseling from going into effect.

The plaintiffs will petition the court for a rehearing by the full 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The injunction blocking enforcement of the law remains in effect until the court decides whether to rehear the case. If the court agrees to the rehearing, the injunction will remain in effect until its decision is issued. Because of the proven value of physician counseling in preventing injury and death, the AAP is advising its members in Florida and throughout the United States to continue to uphold the standard of medical practice and ask about the presence of guns in the environments of children, and to counsel their patients and patients' parents about the importance of storing guns safely.

"We strongly disagree with the 11th Circuit's decision. It is an egregious violation of the First Amendment rights of pediatricians and threatens our ability to provide our patients and their families with scientific, unbiased information," said Mobeen Rathore, MD, FAAP, president of the Florida chapter of the AAP, the Florida Pediatric Society. "This dangerous decision gives state legislatures free license to restrict physicians from asking important questions about health and safety that are vital to providing the best medical care to patients."

Research has shown that physician counseling about gun locks and safe storage, tailored to a child's specific age and development, increases the likelihood a family will take the steps to store their firearms safely. Pediatricians routinely counsel families about firearm safety just as they offer guidance on seat belt use, helmets and parental tobacco use to reduce the risk of injury to children where they live and play.

"State legislatures should not stop physicians from practicing good medicine. This law has a chilling effect on life-saving conversations that take place in the physician's office," said James M. Perrin, MD, FAAP, president of the AAP. "More than 4,000 children are killed by guns every year. Parents who own firearms must keep them locked, with the ammunition locked away separately. In this case, a simple conversation can prevent a tragedy. The evidence is overwhelming – young children simply cannot be taught to overcome their curiosity about guns, and to suggest otherwise is, frankly, the height of irresponsibility."

The Florida Privacy of Firearm Owners Act, which was signed by Florida Gov. Rick Scott in June 2011, violates the free speech rights of doctors and patients. It precludes physicians from asking their patients routine questions and having a discussion about firearm safety, and it subjects physicians accused of violating the statute to harsh penalties usually reserved for egregious professional misconduct.

Soon after passage, the law was challenged in court by the Florida Pediatric Society and the Florida chapters of the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American College of Physicians, as well as by six individual physicians. The lawsuit argued physicians' First Amendment right to free speech and patients' First Amendment right to hear the physician's speech were violated. A U.S. District Court judge agreed with the physicians' lawsuit and issued a permanent injunction, which was appealed by the state of Florida.

Other medical organizations have also challenged the law. In November 2012, an amicus brief supporting the district court ruling to enjoin the law was signed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, the American College of Surgeons, the American College of Preventive Medicine, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and the American Psychiatric Association.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit heard oral arguments in the case in July of 2013. Since the Florida Legislation passed in 2011, at least 10 other states have introduced similar bills, but none have passed.

[IIOY]

If nothing else, the NRA's support for this establishes that the NRA perpetrates a fraud. Here, it isn't promoting a self-defense approach; it is actually promoting the obfuscation of the danger associated with guns. Doctors ask about other threats to safety - smoking, backyard pools, illnesses that other family members may have - but guns are supposed to be off-limit. It's remarkable.

Really, though, anger needs to be directed at the lawmakers who have been bought off by the NRA. The majority of people do not actually support a lot of the gun nonsense. We spend a lot of time talking about the 1% versus the 99% but the real divide causing so many problems is the lobbyists and donors versus the non-lobbying, non-contributing voters.

[lasagnasshole]

Jul 29, 2014 6:34:29 GMT -5 IIOY said:

If nothing else, the NRA's support for this establishes that the NRA perpetrates a fraud. Here, it isn't promoting a self-defense approach; it is actually promoting the obfuscation of the danger associated with guns. Doctors ask about other threats to safety - smoking, backyard pools, illnesses that other family members may have - but guns are supposed to be off-limit. It's remarkable.

Really, though, anger needs to be directed at the lawmakers who have been bought off by the NRA. The majority of people do not actually support a lot of the gun nonsense. We spend a lot of time talking about the 1% versus the 99% but the real divide causing so many problems is the lobbyists and donors versus the non-lobbying, non-contributing voters.

PREACH!

The NRA needs to change its name from the National Rifle Association to the National Rifle MANUFACTURERS' Association.

[NewOrleans]

Jul 29, 2014 6:34:29 GMT -5 IIOY said:

If nothing else, the NRA's support for this establishes that the NRA perpetrates a fraud. Here, it isn't promoting a self-defense approach; it is actually promoting the obfuscation of the danger associated with guns. Doctors ask about other threats to safety - smoking, backyard pools, illnesses that other family members may have - but guns are supposed to be off-limit. It's remarkable.

They ask you about travel and the age of your home, even.  This is absurd.  If you said you had recently traveled to (somewhere), they might recommend a tb test.   They wouldn't tell you you shouldn't travel to that place anymore and omg what is wrong with you.  If you stated you owned firearms, they would brief you on safe storage and accident prevention.  It is amazing that doctors can be FORCED by law to give a non-medical speech full of untruths but can be PREVENTED by law from giving safety information.