re: #157 lostlakehiker

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.

I’m not sure that my gynecologist is on her home turf when dealing with domestic violence, but Kaiser has every Ob/Gyn ask if you are “safe at home” at every visit. Presumably Kaiser has decided that it is in everyone’s interest to ask this question.
With questions about guns, I would imagine it is intended to remind people who just haven’t given the matter thought. They are legion, and what can it hurt. They probably tell you not to keep drain cleaner in a coke bottle under your sink too. (I knew someone years ago whose stepson had multiple surgeries and continuing problems because his parents did just that, and the kid drank some.)