Don’t tell the doctorSEXUAL proclivities, diet, booze: doctors often talk to patients about squirm-inducing subjects. In Florida they inquire about the safety of swimming pools. But, according to a state law considered this week by the Eleventh Circuit court of appeals in Atlanta, they may lose their licences if they ask or “harass” their patients about guns. That is, unless they believe “in good faith” that the questions are medically relevant: a vague proviso which, in a case known as Docs v Glocks that pits a coalition of doctors against Florida, its lawyer struggled to explain.
The law, signed in 2011, is symptomatic of the perfervid politics of guns in the years since self-defence began ousting hunting as the main rationale for owning them; an era in which gun rights—not just defending them from any restraint, but advancing them in increasingly eccentric ways—have become a preoccupation and litmus test for many Republicans. Like previous horrors, the shooting to death of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando seems not to have changed the mood. Not in Congress, anyway, where four proposals to expand...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/28SnWCh
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