Guest AuthorPhysicians interrogating and lecturing parents and children about guns is not about gun safety. It is a political agenda to ban guns.
Despite the smokescreen deployed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Medical Association, one need only remember the policy statements and instructions posted on the AAP’s website years before Florida’s Legislature passed the “Docs vs. Glocks” law — which was upheld recently by a federal appeals court — and still found there today:
“The most effective way to prevent firearm-related injury to children is to keep guns out of homes and communities. The American Academy of Pediatrics strongly supports gun-control legislation. We believe that handguns, deadly air guns and assault weapons should be banned.
“Until handguns are banned, we recommend that handguns and handgun ammunition be regulated, that restrictions be placed on handgun ownership, and that the number of privately owned handguns be reduced. Firearms should be removed from the environments where children live and play.”
And on their page with instructions for advice to parents they wrote:
“Never have a gun in the home. Do not purchase a gun, especially a handgun. Remove all guns present in the home.”
Those are their words. It is a telling expression of their real agenda. Their phrases and use of words such as “gun safety” and “keeping children safe” are designed to feign a lofty message — but the fact remains that those words are merely political eyewash in an attempt to justify their agenda.
Physicians who genuinely wish to offer safety information can simply hand out firearms safety and safe-storage brochures to all patients. Interrogating parents and children about what they own or have in the home is not only an intrusion but is a violation of privacy rights.
Parents do not take their children to physicians for a political lecture about the ownership of firearms; they go there for medical care.
Physicians should “first do no harm” and keep their political opinions out of examining rooms and on the golf course where they belong.
Marion P. Hammer is past president of the National Rifle Association and is executive director of Unified Sportsmen of Florida. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
