That’s because more and more of them believe they have the right to pry into whether a child’s parents are supporters of one of our most fundamental civil rights: The right to keep and bear arms.
And of course, they are basing their prying on a typical Leftist construct — ‘compassion.’
As reported by St. Louis Public Radio:
As a pediatric surgeon at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, Dr. Bo Kennedy has seen firsthand how bullets can shatter tiny bodies.
He’s collected dozens of horror stories from his time in the hospital’s emergency department, including the time a 3-year-old boy stuck a loaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
“That’s what he did with his water pistol to get a drink out of it,” Kennedy said. “And obviously he didn’t survive.”
Because of these kinds of incidents — which are exceedingly rare, tragic though they are — a growing number of pediatricians in St. Louis and around the country now believe it’s their responsibility to ‘promote gun safety’ by, in part, having a conversation with parents about how to keep their kids away from guns.
Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of gun owners are responsible and already take measures to protect their kids from accessing firearms kept in the house.
Mind you, these pediatricians can’t have a conversation with parents unless they know that there are guns in a small patient’s home, so naturally, that requires asking the question: ‘Do you have guns in your house?’
Accidental gun deaths among children are few and far between, thankfully
And lest you think that these doctors came up with this on their own, they didn’t. Most are responding to recent guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is recommending that doctors pry into patients’ firearm ownership so they can talk about “safety.”
“The academy’s official stance is guns should be kept locked, unloaded, and away from where kids can find them,” St. Louis Public Radio reports.
In other words, guns should be kept in a manner that makes them completely useless for self-defense.
For his part, Kennedy said that having these conversations is getting harder, and he blamed — wait for it — the National Rifle Association.
“Talking about guns has become much more of a volatile issue in the past 20 years. The NRA has named any conversation about keeping guns in a way that’s safer into a control issue, and I think people have become very polarized.” (Related: Florida to prohibit doctors from questioning whether patients own firearms.)
He’s probably right about that. Gun owners no doubt have become more “polarized” about this issue because they are constantly harassed by the Leftist political, media, entertainment, academic, and now medical establishments. And they’re sick of being lectured about enjoying a fundamental human and constitutional right.
As for pediatricians’ desire to have a conversation about “gun safety,” annual statistics certainly don’t give anyone the impression that we’re looking at an epidemic of child death due to accidental firearms discharges.
St. Louis Public Radio noted:
According to the journal Pediatrics, between 2012 and 2014, an average of 7,000 children were killed or injured by firearms each year. Of those shootings, 1,300 were fatal, and close to 80 — about 6 percent — were accidental shooting deaths.
Out of 1,300 deaths and about 7,000 incidents overall, only about 80 were accidental deaths. Given the large number of guns in America, that’s an astounding safety record. Yes, of course, any accidental firearms death is tragic. But so is every other accidental death of a child from any cause.
It’s probably true that the majority of pediatricians’ hearts are in the right place when it comes to discussions of gun safety with parents. But this sounds more like harassment than a public service.
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