Docs vs. Glocks
It’s pertinent for doctors to ask patients going through stress or depression if they have a gun.
Less than a month before Florida hosts the Republican National Convention, the state’s right-wing governor is pushing for an unusual law that privileges the Second Amendment over the First Amendment. Gov. Rick Scott announced Monday that his administration will pursue a court appeal to defend the state’s controversial “Docs vs. Glocks” law, which makes it a crime for doctors to ask patients if they own guns.
The 2011 “Firearm Owners’ Privacy Act”—one of a series of NRA-backed, aggressive pro-gun laws passed by Florida’s conservative Legislature in recent years—aims at keeping physicians from gathering information on patients’ weapons while discussing their health risk factors. (Decades of studies have shown that even law-abiding, responsible gun owners and their families have higher risks of death by gunshot when they keep a firearm in the home.)