Most Americans have strong feelings about gun control, whether in favor of more or less. Legislation has even been passed restricting physicians from discussing guns with patients. What is your opinion about healthcare professionals discussing safekeeping of guns in the home?
Gun ownership and regulation is a very emotional issue in the U.S. and there has been strong reaction to whether physicians and other healthcare providers should be involved in doing more to curb gun related injuries and deaths. I would like to hear some of your opinions regarding physician involvement, but first let's look at some of the gun statistics in the U.S.
More than 108,000 people are shot per year in murders, assaults, suicides, suicide attempts, unintentional shootings or by police intervention.
* More than 32,000 of them die.
* The U.S. has the most gun homicides of any developed nation. 29.7 per 100,000.
* Everyday 297 people are shot.
* 89 people die.
* 31 of them are murdered.
* 55 are suicides.
* 2 are killed unintentionally.
* 1 is killed by police.
* 1 is unknown intent.
* One in five deaths are people ages 15-29.
Over 17,000 American children and teens are injured or killed each year due to gun violence.
* 2,677 of those children die.
* Nearly 48 youth are shot per day including 7 fatalities.
* 5 are murdered and 2 are suicides.
1 in 3 homes with children have guns.
* 42% of parents with guns keep at least one unlocked.
* 25% of parents with guns keep at least loaded.
* 3 in 4 children know where firearms are kept in the home.
(Statistics; bradycampaign.org).
It has been suggested that clinicians could play a major role in reducing children's access to guns by asking if there is a gun in the home, and if so, counseling on firearm storage practices. One study showed that patients who received counseling on firearm storage were more likely to make a change in storage practice than patients who did not receive counseling. (64% vs 33%). (J Am Board Fam.Pract).
Pediatrician's offices and hospitals routinely give out infant and car seats, would it also be appropriate to distribute trigger locks and lockboxes? Firearm related injuries are a public health issue, so should there be public health initiatives regarding firearms such as there have been for reducing tobacco, toy and motor vehicle related deaths?
Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.
Asking if a child wears a helmet while riding a bike seems pretty obvious, yet only about 400 children die every year from bicycle accidents, about 3,000 kids die every year from guns in the home.
Sorry, but I don't consider gangbanger homicides to be "kids dying due to guns in the home". Ditto for teen suicides -- truly suicidal teens will generally try another method if they don't have a gun available.
But good job trying to play the statistics manipulation game.
Sorry, but I don't consider gangbanger homicides to be "kids dying due to guns in the home". Ditto for teen suicides -- truly suicidal teens will generally try another method if they don't have a gun available.
But good job trying to play the statistics manipulation game.
That doesn't actually include "gangbanger homicides", and even you exclude suicide attempts there are still more than 2000 injuries to children from unintentional shootings involving guns obtained from the home, a large portion of which were not properly stored or secured.
And while adolescents will often look to other means of suicide if a gun is unavailable, there is evidence they are less likely to act on a plan when less reliable means are available.
Do you really disagree that improperly secured firearms in a home with children are a potential threat?
"According to the Guttmacher Institute, there were 1.21 million abortions performed in the United States in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available. This amounts to 3,322 abortions per day.
"According to the Guttmacher Institute, there were 1.21 million abortions performed in the United States in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available. This amounts to 3,322 abortions per day.
Specializes in Allergy/ENT, Occ Health, LTC/Skilled.
My pediatrician actually asks this at every well child check. We do not have any in our home but I would tell her if we did and it doesn't bother me if she asks. Call me crazy but when my small children want to start going to other kid's houses, after a lengthy time of knowing the family before they do so , I won't hesitate to ask the same question and how they store them.
So I think it's a fine question to ask in the right scenario. Obviously, your ENT doesn't need to know if have guns in your house but if your kids pediatrician is asking to ensure they are stored safely, I think that's fair.
When I worked home hospice, it was one of the questions that the social worker would ask. If at any visit, if we saw a firearm, we would ask "is there a place where any guns can be locked up before staff visit", just the same as if there were aggressive/protective dogs- can the dogs go in another room while the visit takes place. As a home healthcare worker, it is a matter of keeping yourself (and your co-workers safe) as well as the pt and their family safe. By the way, I have had conversations in the past with families about removing guns from the home- or removing bullets from home and gun in situations where the pt is becoming agitated/confused/delusional.
Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.
That doesn't actually include "gangbanger homicides", and even you exclude suicide attempts there are still more than 2000 injuries to children from unintentional shootings involving guns obtained from the home, a large portion of which were not properly stored or secured.
And while adolescents will often look to other means of suicide if a gun is unavailable, there is evidence they are less likely to act on a plan when less reliable means are available.
Do you really disagree that improperly secured firearms in a home with children are a potential threat?
I never said I disagreed that improperly secured ANYTHING is a problem -- I just implied that your statistics are like the points in Drew Carey's show, "Whose Line Is It Anyway":
Accidental discharge of firearms resulted in 505 U.S. deaths in 2013 for ALL AGES, birth through 85+. That hardly jives with your claim of "about 3,000 kids die every year from guns in the home". The actual number for ages 14-and-under was 69 in 2013. If you include "youths" aged 15-24, the number of deaths from accidental discharge of a firearm skyrockets to 176 that year. That's still a far cry from 3000.
I have no problem with keeping guns secured from young children; our guns were kept in a gun safe when my son was young. He was also taught gun safety at a very young age. That's just what responsible parents do.
Having civil liberties at the expense of a relatively few amount of lives is worth it.
I can't figure out the right way to respond to this. Most civil liberties aren't protecting a person's right to carry a thing that is by its very definition created to do harm. That is not an opinion I am sharing on this overly debated topic. It is simply stating - I find this assertion callous and terribly insensitive to those relatively few families dealing with the consequences of this particular civil liberty.
I do have strong feelings on this topic, but for the sake of this thread, staying on topic is a good idea.
I personally would not hold back a question about firearms in the home. I do, however, live in a conservative area where hunting is extremely commonplace and (I assume) the majority of people living here do actually have firearms in their homes. It would surprise me more to hear a person does not have at least a rifle in their home.
Understanding this is just the local culture here, proper storage would be a great point of education. I think starting to talk to these older guys about safe storage of their weapons would be more likely to offend them, honestly. They'd look at me like I'm some 12-year old idiot trying to lecture an expert on something I don't know a thing about. And... they'd be right!
Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.
I think starting to talk to these older guys about safe storage of their weapons would be more likely to offend them, honestly. They'd look at me like I'm some 12-year old idiot trying to lecture an expert on something I don't know a thing about. And... they'd be right!
This is the biggest point to consider, IMO -- if you want to lecture people about proper gun storage/safety, you had better be well-educated in that regard.
If someone is an actual gun enthusiast and/or has a license to carry a concealed weapon, I daresay there's not a darned thing that the average healthcare professional could teach them about gun safety -- they are already very well-versed in the subject.
Ditto for teen suicides -- truly suicidal teens will generally try another method if they don't have a gun available.
This isn't actually true. Suicide is a complicated topic that you're summing up here rather broadly. There are a lot of factors that go into suicide, but in general we know that restricting access often doesn't cause "substitution." That is, people tend to have a method in mind and impeding their use of that method reduces the number of people who commit suicide.
Suicidal ideation exists on a spectrum from people who never experience it to those who experience it all the time, and as you move along that spectrum from "never" to "always" you find fewer and fewer people. The vast majority of people have fleeting thoughts of suicide, and for those people restricting access allows time for the thoughts to pass.
Interestingly enough, this is a consistent finding in humans. The harder it is to complete something the less likely we are to do it, whether it's suicide or eating candy.
Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.
This isn't actually true. Suicide is a complicated topic that you're summing up here rather broadly. There are a lot of factors that go into suicide, but in general we know that restricting access often doesn't cause "substitution." That is, people tend to have a method in mind and impeding their use of that method reduces the number of people who commit suicide.
But how do people decide what method to use.... will someone with no guns in the house become fixated on a gun suicide? Vice versa?
Firearms-related youth suicides are outnumbered by non-firearms-related youth suicides. Do we also ask parents of teens if there are knives, razors, prescription drugs, ropes, belts, etc., in the home and, if so, are they "properly secured"? Where does that line get drawn?
brillohead, ADN, RN
1,781 Posts
Sorry, but I don't consider gangbanger homicides to be "kids dying due to guns in the home". Ditto for teen suicides -- truly suicidal teens will generally try another method if they don't have a gun available.
But good job trying to play the statistics manipulation game.