A similar scenario actually happened to a member of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. The patient refused to answer the questions and filed a complaint through the hospital against the doctor. The hospital never responded to the complaint, but the doctor dropped the patient like a hot potato (Guns & Ammo, Oct. 2000, p.57). Now just where did this silliness begin?

I believe it began when society began to "Medicalize" (neat term, huh?) a lot of conditions we used to call vices. The town drunk is no longer a person of low morals and weak constitution, now the poor fellow is a "victim" of the "disease" called Alcoholism and subsequently is in need of medical attention. The fool who gambles his paycheck away before he buys food for his family is not a fool anymore, he is a "victim" of a treatable "addiction." Disruptive, disorderly, and disobedient children are no longer considered brats, but are now "victims" of a condition called Attention Deficit Disorder and they are loaded down with a large number of mind-altering drugs. (Now I take a sidebar at this point, I have seen children who have a legitimate neurochemical imbalance in their brain that leaves them terribly excitable and my heart goes out to them and their parents as they deal with this situation, but too many children are falling under this umbrella who really need a swift whack to their buttocks; I believe the doctors are treating these children at the wrong end.)

Now a portion of society wants to consider the statistically small amount of gun violence we have in this country as a medical problem. One anti-gun organization calls itself "Sane Alternatives to the Firearms Epidemic," the name which Ari Armstrong, editor for "Freedom Report" writes, "...likens gun ownership to a disease." The Center for Disease Control has funded studies over the last few decades treating guns as a virus needing to be eradicated. Some of those studies have come up with those great junk science statistics such as "a firearm in the home is 43 times more likely to be used against a member of that household than an outside attacker" (if anyone really studies this "study" they will find those who were injured or killed were 43 times more likely to end up that way because they lived in the same house with a violent criminal rather than that they lived with a gun around). And this junk science is being filtered down to your family doctor through their respective medical associations so they can do their part to help win the battle of "gun disease."

And what are those frivolous lawsuits that many cities and the Federal government are bringing against the gun manufacturers after but to cover medical costs incurred by those entities because of the "raging fury of gun violence" (please note tone of sarcasm at this point) in this country? (Of course, they would never hold the person who actually pulled the trigger responsible for the medical expenses of his victim because he or she is a victim of some as yet unnamed disease.)

So what are you supposed to do when that man or woman you've trusted for years with your health and the health of your family begins to ask those intrusive questions? Well you can adamantly refuse to answer the questions as JPFO recommends. You can explain to your doctor that you consider these questions to be more political than medical. Or you can just agree between yourselves that your guns are safely stored and used and everyone in the house knows how to properly handle them and that's that. I might have a little bit more fun with my answers.

"Well, let's see, Doc. I've got that Thompson machine gun that Grandpa carried in W.W.II. Boy that thing really rattles when you fire it. And then there's that pump shotgun that Dad had. It's a twenty-gauge but you can accidentally slip a twelve-gauge shell into it. If you fire that baby, it will probably blow your hand clean off. Then there's that snubnose 5-shot .38 that Mom had that is a great gun for playing Russian Roulette with because there's a problem with the cylinder latch and it skips a chamber every once and a while. Sometimes you have to pull the trigger 25 times to fire all five shots. And I got several cases of ammo that reach up to my ceiling. Let's see, the ceiling is 7'8" and the cases are four inches thick, you got a calculator handy, Doc?"

Peter W. Wickham, Jr.
AKA The Ol' Grey Ghost

Peter W. Wickham Jr. (AKA The Ol' Grey Ghost) is the Editor In Chief for Safestcrime.com. � Copyright 2000 http://www.safestcrime.com. All rights reserved. Visit our site to view our project showing states that are safe/unsafe to live in and why, at http://www.safestcrime.com/Safe.htm. Our goal is to have all 50 states done, and we welcome assistance for the states that are not yet done.

Visit Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws, an organization of doctors who take exception to gun-fearing doctors using their doctor/patient relationships to promote a non-doctor political agenda.