Doctors target gun violence as a social disease

[Don H]

"What I'm struggling with is, is this the new social norm? This is what we're going to have to live with if we have more personal access to firearms," said Hargarten, emergency medicine chief at Froedtert Hospital and director of the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin. "We have a public health issue to discuss. Do we wait for the next outbreak or is there something we can do to prevent it?"

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=21659490&nid...cid=featured-4

The article suggests that imposing further restrictions on who may possess a firearm may be a good thing; a ban on "assault weapons" and multiple magazines; modification of firearms to make them 'safer'; and more.

Gun ownership – a precursor to gun violence – can spread "much like an infectious disease circulates," said Daniel Webster, a health policy expert and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore.

We've had a number of threads regarding medical professionals inquiring into firearm ownership by patients. It seems likely that this is something that will not go away and may well become more prevalent in the future. This article clearly suggests to me the possibility of health records being used to deny firearms ownership, especially as more and more medical offices convert fully to computerized record-keeping and make it easier for government agencies to access records of specific patients.

[armoredman]

It's OK, Doc, I wear a condom while shooting.


Seriously, it's ridiculous, but it's just as nonsensical as what they are saying.

Dear Doc,
Perhaps you should be worried about the social disease called crime? Maybe you should concentrate on diseases cause by germs and viruses, and leave the enforcement of law and criminal justice to the experts? I'll listen to you on gun control when you listen to me on heart surgery.
Thank you, see you next check-up day.

[Aguila Blanca]

Already being discussed here: http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=497636

Originally Posted by Don H

We've had a number of threads regarding medical professionals inquiring into firearm ownership by patients. It seems likely that this is something that will not go away and may well become more prevalent in the future. This article clearly suggests to me the possibility of health records being used to deny firearms ownership, especially as more and more medical offices convert fully to computerized record-keeping and make it easier for government agencies to access records of specific patients.

A long time ago, on (I think) a different forum, someone proposed that if you ever need to see a mental health practitioner, go to one in a city other than where you live, use an alias, and pay cash.

While that might have seemed a bit paranoid at that time, it's looking more and more prescient.

[osageid]

Originally Posted by Don H

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=21659490&nid...cid=featured-4

The article suggests that imposing further restrictions on who may possess a firearm may be a good thing; a ban on "assault weapons" and multiple magazines; modification of firearms to make them 'safer'; and more.



We've had a number of threads regarding medical professionals inquiring into firearm ownership by patients. It seems likely that this is something that will not go away and may well become more prevalent in the future. This article clearly suggests to me the possibility of health records being used to deny firearms ownership, especially as more and more medical offices convert fully to computerized record-keeping and make it easier for government agencies to access records of specific patients.

I am a doctor and the extent of the medical record being electronic is scary in some ways, as of Jan 1 2013 all medical records will be mandatory electronic. This is all called "meaningful use" . Privacy is going to become a premium.........


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[scrubcedar]

Don H, It looks like you and I saw this article and posted on it at exactly the same time. Since your thread is taking off, I'll post my comment here.
A little surprised to find this article in heavily pro-gun Utah.
http://www.ksl.com/index.php?sid=216...&s_cid=queue-5
It looks like an AP article, (everybody who's surprised by THAT raise your hand), that was picked up by the local news.

I was in nursing a long time and this theory would surface now and again as far back as I can remember. Keep in mind most of the people in the medical industry , with the possible exception of doctors, are rabidly anti-gun.

This would normally merit a shrug of the shoulders and maybe rolling your eyes, old news, so what?
With the new healthcare laws around the corner, and one of our largest cities Mayor (New York)making nutty executive decisions about what is best for us (Sir! Sir! step away from the Big Gulp and slowly raise your hands!)this argument takes on a whole new life. How does "No we can't legally take away your guns but we are revoking the entire families health coverage" sound?
I know we have people with law experience on the quorum, can you guys comment?
We need to keep an eye on this, has anyone from some where else seen this article?

[mete]

Gun violence " ?? Does that mean other types of violence are OK and not social diseases??

[Uncle Billy]

They feel the same about motorcycles, smoking, alcohol, high-performance cars, and any other "non essential" artifact of our culture (and other cultures) that people could be harmed or killed by. Some are reasonable - tobacco is a killer for sure, but others aren't inevitably going to harm unless they are used irresponsibly.

They argue against the hardware because hardware doesn't pay the bills. If people are going to be irresponsible - and lots are going to be whatever the risks are - then they need to be made to eat only the right stuff (no fructose, no trans fats, no cholesterol, ad nauseum) in moderation, have no access to sharp objects (let alone firearms), not be able to go fast in machines and be required to wear helmets and such on ones that afford no protection, stay out of the sun, lose weight, exercise, avoid stress, and on and on.

To avoid all those pitfalls, just die and get it over with, it's the responsible thing to do

[rtpzwms]

What worries me most about the electronic medical records is not that they are on the computer but the simple social engineering of the users of the systems that house these systems. I worked in a hospital for many years and I had the lead in installing an electronic medical record system. The system was secured with encryption from the workstation to the server. The data on the disk was encrypted. So from that aspect it was at least as safe as an old style paper medical record.

But the doctors and nurses would share logins on a regular basis. The nurses saw no problem with this behavior at all, and the doctors didn’t care. This is what goes on in the hospital I don’t what to think of what would happen in a private practice without an IT team to support the system. Many of the doctors and nurses had no concept of what they were doing from a security aspect and it was a constant battle. If the IT team saw two logins from the same use at two systems from different departments we would reset the user password. This would cause the user to call the department to get there login and **** them off in the process.

I’ll stop my soap box here and just say there is a lot more to this problem.

[Skadoosh]

This line in particular I find troubling in two ways:

Gun ownership – a precursor to gun violence – can spread "much like an infectious disease circulates,"

1) A precursor to gun violence?...much like owning a car and a bottle of alcohol in the home is a pre-cursor to a drunk driving incident? Apparently this is not a difficult a leap for some as it is for me.

2) Tracking this 'disease' would imply the requirement of a gun ownership database...

[Don H]

Originally Posted by Aguila Blanca

Already being discussed here: http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=497636

I didn't incorporate this in the thread you linked, even though I was aware of it, because I felt the focus was sufficiently different in this article and my commentary that it deserved its own tread.

Without delving too much into the politics of government involvement in healthcare, the access that government does/will have to healthcare records raises the possibility, if not probability, that heretofore relatively private medical records will become a direct factor in determining suitability for firearm ownership. Actual adjudication of mental health issues may not even be required if/when a backdoor option exists.

[g.willikers]

Since the medical profession, and medical misadventure, kills far more people than gun owners, maybe they should clean up their act instead.
http://www.health-care-reform.net/causedeath.htm

[CDW4ME]

I have been "infected" with gun ownership , will need physical therapy: align sights & squeeze trigger. My prescription includes lots of premium ammo of various calibers; I should only be responsible for the $10 copay for each case of Ranger T, HST, Gold Dot.

[Silver Bullet]

This article clearly suggests to me the possibility of health records being used to deny firearms ownership, especially as more and more medical offices convert fully to computerized record-keeping and make it easier for government agencies to access records of specific patients.

Backdoor registration.

[Aguila Blanca]

Originally Posted by Skadoosh

This line in particular I find troubling in two ways:

1) A precursor to gun violence?...much like owning a car and a bottle of alcohol in the home is a pre-cursor to a drunk driving incident? Apparently this is not a difficult a leap for some as it is for me.

Never mind the alcohol. Cars kill a lot of people, not always as a result of drunk driving. This is really saying that

"Automobile ownership -- a precursor to vehicular manslaughter -- can spread "much like an infectious disease circulates."

Grammatically, of course, the statement falls apart. I don't think the author intended to say (but DID say) that gun ownership can spread like an infectious disease circulates. I think he intended to say that's how gun violence spreads. However, I don't think the claim can stand up to any sort of HONEST statistical analysis.

Further, singling out "gun" violence from "violence" is a rigged game. The only way one can commit gun violence is with a gun, so eliminating guns automatically eliminates from the discussion violence by knives, axes, chainsaws, box cutters, baseball bats, nunchucks, and bombs (to name just a few). A look at the graph of crime statistics from another thread running parallel to this one shows that eliminating handguns in Great Britain in fact resulted in a massive INCREASE in violent crime:



The ancillary problem is the one we have recognized for decades: "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."

[BGutzman]

I think the truth is some on the left are starting to think about the day when finally the SCOTUS declares the 2A to be the civil right that it is... So this whole thing is a way to try to regulate it from a different perspective...

I wonder how many laws and regulations its going to take before the nation wakes up and asks itself just how free we are? Yet we do it to ourselves over and over again.... Its a pandoras box but I do believe one day the SCOTUS will have to come out on the 2A in a much more complete manner...

[scrubcedar]

rtpzwms is very much right about the mindset of medical people. It's just different. I have 20 years of nursing experience in my past and you couldn't pay me enough to go back.
I can personally guarantee you that large numbers of these people would lie,cheat,steal, whatever was needed to take away your guns. They cannot contemplate that they may be wrong.
I have seen the studies these charlatans use in the attempt to make this a social issue, after being challenged, I printed one up and took it apart piece by piece at the nurses desk. You would have thought I had personally insulted all of their mothers at once! When it became clear that this research was flawed in every way possible, they suddenly had something important to do in a patients room. All of them. Not one of them wanted to have their illusions shattered so they RAN AWAY.
We would get ex-military nurses in, they were quite often treated with contempt or outright run off by the staff.
Don't get me wrong I have worked with men and women that I consider angels on this earth, truly some of the finest examples of what a human being should be end up in nursing!
There is a large proportion of the profession who like having power over others and thats why they are doing it. The parts of the medical profession that have this agenda are the parts of the medical profession that have no scruples about lying, cheating ,and twisting facts to get what they want. They make very sympathetic examples to stick in front of a camera.

This is MUCH more of a threat than you think!

If,as I said in my post above this is a backdoor ban by denying health coverage understand your healthcare providers may not be on your side!

[Silver Bullet]

We need a thread where we report which doctors make firearms inquiries. Gun owners looking for a new doctor can check that thread to know which ones to avoid.

Even better would be if it had its own web site, CommieDoc, or something.

Start registering all the docs who come out of the closet and self-identify as totalitarians.

[Tom Servo]

We need a thread where we report which doctors make firearms inquiries. Gun owners looking for a new doctor can check that thread to know which ones to avoid.

So, let's say I've got an ailment that has to be handled by a specialist. I go onto a web site like the one suggested and find out that the only guy in my area asks about firearms. So, do I suffer in silence while maintaining ideological purity, or do I sell out the cause by enlisting his help?

Let's all just take a step back from that ledge and calm down. Let's also endeavor to avoid general politics.

Aguila, that graph looks familiar! Good point.

[Romeo 33 Delta]

I had read somewhere that medical mishaps (doctor mistakes) result in more deaths than do firearms. If that's true, then my advice to the good doctor would be: "PHYSICAN, HEAL THYSELF!"

[kilimanjaro]

It is true, doctors kill far more people by error and malpractice than guns do. The ratio is at least 2:1.

[rebs]

This whole thing is about government control. Too much government control. I could see a shrink asking these questions if they have a patient that is mentally unstable and a risk to be violent. That may help stop the senseless shooting spree's like the ones happening all over the country. I think people that commit these crimes are indeed of a diminished mental capacity. But these are not questions to be asked by a general practitioner.

[JimPage]

They should concentrate on box cutters. After all they killed about 3000 people on 9/11.

[Silver Bullet]

So, let's say I've got an ailment that has to be handled by a specialist. I go onto a web site like the one suggested and find out that the only guy in my area asks about firearms. So, do I suffer in silence while maintaining ideological purity, or do I sell out the cause by enlisting his help?

You enlist his help, it's the only reasonable choice in the situation you described. You just do what you can when you can. You don't have to be martyr for the cause to contribute to the cause.

[spacecoast]

Unbelievably stupid language in that original story -

Gun ownership – a precursor to gun violence – can spread "much like an infectious disease circulates," said Daniel Webster, a health policy expert and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore.

"There's sort of a contagion phenomenon" after a shooting, where people feel they need to have a gun for protection or retaliation, he said.

Uh huh, this guy is a crackpot and ought to be called out on his inflammatory rhetoric. Another Johns Hopkins genius (or maybe infection would be a better word).

Citing their own statistics, I find it remarkable that in a nation of up to 300 million guns, only 9% of all violent crimes involve a gun. I guess they didn't think it worthy to point out that the overwhelming majority of gun owners have zero propensity to commit violent crimes.

[thallub]

I am a doctor and the extent of the medical record being electronic is scary in some ways, as of Jan 1 2013 all medical records will be mandatory electronic. This is all called "meaningful use" . Privacy is going to become a premium.........

Very good point. My doctor went electronic early this year. At every visit the doctor and his nurse assistant have laptops.

Privacy is compromised.