re: #111 Obdicut

They couldn’t, without violating their medical ethics, really. They’re not experts on who can be a responsible owner. They can’t make the judgement of who is capable of handing a firearm and keeping it safe from their children. Their only course, with the health of their patients as their primary concern, is to recommend not having them.

The results will be that most people ignore them, some people will get rid of guns or not get them, and others will become more responsible.

They have no coercive force; all they’re doing is speaking. It’s not an attack on gun rights in any way, shape, or form.

But doctors are not on their home turf when it comes to this topic. How can they know the local incidence of jewelry-store robbery and murder, for instance? By reading the paper, perhaps. But that’s not a medical journal.

The patient knows as well as the doctor that guns go bang. This isn’t a mystery. It isn’t something like smoking, where you pull the trigger on yourself but the bang comes years later. A pastor, a cop, a trusted friend, an expert adviser in matters of home security, an insurance agent—-all these may be in a better position to give advice than an MD.

If the patient is suicidal or something, that’d be a different story.