Florida will soon be the laughing stock of America, now that gun owners can keep guns in their house and doctors won't be allowed to ask them if they have them.
Sponsored by Rep. Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford, the bill (HB 155) would make it a felony for a physician or staff member to ask patients or family members of patients if they own guns or store guns at home. If found guilty, the medical provider could be fined up to $5 million or face up to five years in jail.
Republicans really hate doctors, they want them to shut up about abortion and want to harass them with the insurance companies, now this. I mean, doctors ask a lot questions about other harmful things around the house like cigarettes, electrical cords, pools, etc, why not guns? Oh yeah, because guns are holy and can't be questioned.
Imagine someone working their ass off to get through medical school and one day becomes a doctor. They are talking to a patient about safety and children and it slips out "do you have a gun?" They patient gets pissed and reports the doctor who goes to jail. To me that is unfair.
What if asking about guns stops the next Jared Loughner? And that is the crux of the matter here, the NRA while openly opposing shootings like Tucson secretly supports it. If there is no other issue to pinpoint where Jared falls on the political spectrum, it's this. Gun-nuttery is pretty much a symptom of the right and not left, so IMHO Jared could not foster any relevant left-wing beliefs (ditto for his position on abortion). With that said, it's 100% fair to trash the right over this.
But back to the NRA. I've come to the conclusion that the NRA is somewhat of a terrorist organization in the sense that they have created an atmosphere of gun-worship and violence that falls outside even rational gun ownership. I mean if you want a gun for hunting or self defense, more power to you, but I don't think the NRA truly serves that purpose. Of course the NRA claims the platform of self defense and probably have prevented many burglaries, but you have to remember that this is mainly a wash. The crook is using a gun also because of the NRA's gun-worshipping culture that makes them use the gun when rationally it's a bad idea. So in the act of attempting to promote self-defense, they have (in?)inadvertently made the criminals use guns also.
Then there is the abuse of guns that fall outside of simple robbery or burglary, the shooting rampages. Anybody who watches Bowling for Columbine and doesn't walk away with the conclusion that the NRA has an indifference or hostility towards the pain and suffering of school shootings is an idiot. The NRA held rallies to spite the victims of the shootings. It's the same thing with the Tucson shooting except that after 2 years of teabagger hate, one can make the argument that to a greater extent the entire conservative movement is complicit in the shooting and not just the NRA. Conservative insanity is tied to guns and nobody can separate the two.
Some may say Jared was not a true conservative, but simply because of the gun-nuttery issue, any shooting regardless of the ambiguity of ideology should by default be blamed on the right.
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Doctors have just as much of a right to not treat gun owners as pharmacists have a right to not sell contraceptives.
ReplyDeleteFIW!
This isn't an issue of treating them or not. It's an issue of allowing the doctor to talk about gun safety. Apparently the NRA hates the concept of it.
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