Closing the 'b' tag since no one else will...

I remember reading about this a few years back. It's supposedly been hijacked as a "health and wellbeing" matter in that a child in a house with guns is whatever percent more likely to fall victim to accidental gunshot wounds. They validate it by saying that instructing a kid about precautions about gun deaths is no different than instructing a kid about STDs or anything else life threatening.

Note, though, that owning a lion makes you far more likely to be eaten by a lion, but no doctor so far has asked me or my child if we own one...

If insurance was paying I could see why they would want to know. If there was a gun in the house you bet they would want to know.

Nope, I don't have pool either. I figure if I do go shopping for lions or pools, it has to be one or the other. There's less danger of my lion drowning if I don't have a pool. But... then there'd be less chance of me being eaten by a lion if there is a chance my lion will first drown in my pool.

I'm sure if I worked at this long enough I could work out how owning guns, pools, and lions makes my home safer, and probably fit in open flames and chain smoking too. You can make any point you want if you try hard enough. In the end, your odds are worse every day you live. Living, evidently, is bad for you.

So, given the odds of malpractice, car accidents on the way, etc., perhaps even going to the doctor is much worse for you than owning a gun. I wonder how the numbers of malpractice vs. accidental shooting would work out...

Lions are lions, guns are guns, pools are pools, doctors are doctors. Life is one big, wacky crap shoot.

Firearm Injury Prevention Counseling at the Journal of Pediatrics.

Also... A bill to stop physicians from asking.



Might as well add lions to the list, wouldn't take another 10 seconds. Maybe large predatory birds, too.

Truman may have got us in, But MacArthur frakked it up. He just wanted the huge, glorious Normandy-style battle under his belt, without realizing that World War II is the aberration in American military involvement - we hadn't fought a war anything like that before, and haven't had one since. There's a reason that Ike sacked him the second he was in office.

Depends on where you live. Guns don't have to be registered in most places. If you move to a new area and go to the police department and tell them you want to register the ownership of your guns they'll look at you like you're a nut. You mostly see that in crime-ridden urban cesspools where it doesn't help anyway.

In fact, it makes it worse. Such places draw illegal gun dealers, much in the same way that bootlegging and drug crime always seem to be worse in "dry" areas. If you have a legal gun store with fewer hitches for purchase, it's actually HARDER to get a weapon to use for crime.

Why? Because in places where it is almost impossible to get a legal weapon, illegal ones are a hot commodity, and people sell them on street corners. Dealers in illegal weapons have a hard time making a living in areas where it isn't so hard to buy guns legally.

Forcing people to jump through hoops to buy guns, and making it inconvenient to own them just makes the dealers who don't do those things popular. Then you have a community full of "cold", cheap weapons.

I actually know of MANY law abiding citizens who don't register their firearms, Shovel. They try to live in areas where registraation is not required.

I don't think that asking a child if there are guns in the home should be the responsibility of medical care professionals, and here's why: Because people NEED medical care. I know for a fact that fear of the kinds of intrusions that doctors make into their personal lives has kept many parents from seeking adequate medical care. Because a doctor who disapproves of your lifestyle can very quickly find a way to hurt you and your family.

Doctors are NOT trained law enforcement officials, and should NOT be required to act as such.

My Doc never wants to talk about guns either. And I hate it when he slips and snaps one of those latex gloves on and tells me to roll over. Heh, I'd whole lot rather discuss my .380 ya know?