I am a doctor. I have been a shooter for 15 years.
I obviously am pro-gun & pro-SA or I wouldn't be posting to these boards.
Unfortunately, with high intelligence & lots of formal education comes the naive perspective that "I know everything" for some physicians, and the hubris to consider that gun-rights issues are a medical problem, which is false.
If your pediatrician is going to ask about guns in the home, he should also (to be consistent) ask about ladders, sharp corners on tables & cupboards, whether the children are left unattended in the bathtub or with electrical equipment, and if the snow and ice are always removed from your sidewalk in winter.
SAFETY IS NOT A MEDICAL ISSUE! CHILD SAFETY IS NOT A PEDIATRIC MEDICAL ISSUE! Medicine deals with the treatment of disease, and within the field of Preventive Medicine, with the control of risk factors for disease. It is not the province of medicine to protect us from ourselves or from all "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" in the world. Does any parent welcome the arrogant intrusion of these sorts of questions into private life? Might as well ask about the parents' personal habits and avocations. ("Do you smoke crack? Are you a member of an organised crime family?")
I have followed the biased & dishonest gun-related studies published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association, an organisation to which I don't belong, by choice), for several years. Without exception (for the examples of which I'm aware), these "studies" use biased samples, small sample sizes, and inappropriate statistical techniques to "demonstrate" a predetermined conclusion, that guns, mostly handguns, are in one way or another, "unhealthy", "harmful" or associated with criminality.
THIS IS PSEUDO-SCIENCE. It is poor science in any case, being an example of the application of dubious social science methods, not pure scienctific investigation, with the obvious intent to espouse a particular (anti-gun) viewpoint by performing a "study", the report of which is clothed in the trappings of "science", though critical review of the studies always convinces that the "investigators" aret lacking integrity & objectivity. (In objective application of the scientific method, a null hypothesis is tested by the application of a condition or stimulus to a test group, and a control group of identical or "matched" subjects is given a placebo stimulus or condition, and responses are tabulated and analysed with the null hypothesis, that is, the assumption that there are no outcome differences, being accepted or rejected to a level of acceptable statistical probability, usually 5%.) Junk science doesn't belong in the pages of any peer-reviewed medical-scientific journal, and the political bias of JAMA is what the publication of such articles demonstrates, nothing more.
I'm not alone in this opinion, though physicians who think as I do are certainly in the minority among doctors as a group. For those interested, there is a website for Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research at
www.dipr.org, wherein articles about these issues are available for review.
Sorry for the rant, but it's a related issue.
Regarding the pediatrician noted above, it is likely that he/she is naive or anti-gun or at least inclined to be officious. He/she may nonetheless be a good pediatrician for those times your child is sick, and the decision to remain with said pediatrician is a personal one, obviously.
Sorry for the length of this post, just my $.04.
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"Potius sero quam nunquam."