Not true, Federal statute specifically prohibits the collection and retention of firearms ownership data beyond the dealer's receipt log (DROS). Asking and recording under directive from some health initiative violates that statute.

If I go to the doctor with the flu, I don't want to be questioned if I own firearms. It's like going in with a headache and suggest I get an oil change on the Chevy.

Let's go a step further, my son did his appointments from the time he could drive and I didn't accompany him since about age 12 in the exam. Does the doctor ask junior or daughter if mom and dad keep firearms?

Any thought that it stays in the doctor's records is preposterous, almost every state has a health information exchange for transfer of records between providers and also stores a centralized copy that can be retrieved by a different doc or for statistical disease research and public health reporting to the CDC. The regs say PII data on stats data has to be omitted, but that isn't a technical limitation, you probably thought your phone records were never looked at either, but oops, the federal government hoovers up 50 terabytes an hour worth.

If any one of my doctors asked me about my ownership of a firearm I'd reply with the question. .."Have you stopped beating your spouse?

Actually, the real issue is not the discussion at all, but what happens when the answers to that discussion are recorded. I know you keep focusing on the First Amendment side of the issue, but that is a minor concern compared to how the information is being used after being collected. If the information was never used and never subject to government scrutiny, there wouldn't be a problem at all - most doctors wouldn't ask the question (because it is entirely irrelevant) and most patients wouldn't feel pressured to answer the question. But the reality of the situation is that patients do feel pressured to answer and the information does get misused by bureaucrats with an ideological axe to grind. They hide behind the First Amendment so that they can assault the Second Amendment. The problem is that once the Second Amendment is gone, the First has no protection - and it soon falls as well.

Nothing in the linked article mentions "instructions". It's a policy statement by a professional association. You stated that these are instructions from the association to the pediatricians. I do not find this to be the case. Whoever is downvoting my posts is free to continue doing so, but I do not downvote a post just because I disagree with it.

There isn't a legislatively-passed law. What were being used were bureaucratic rules issued under the auspices of the ACA and (as I have explained) were entirely lawful. And part of that "law"/instruction required doctors to ask and then record for review by the Federal Government those answers. For the last time, this isn't a First Amendment issue (as the Justices in this case claim) but one of misuse of information to infringe on Second Amendment rights.

"What would be appropriate would be a state law upholding the rights of doctors and patients to discuss any subject they mutually agree to, and pledging to protect these rights in court against any federal incursion."

I don't disagree in the slightest. If the conversations between doctors and patients were completely and absolutely protected from investigation by the government, I'd totally be with you. The problem is that our current environment just isn't the panacea you are predicating your argument to apply to. We don't disagree - we're just talking about different worlds: you the ideal and me the current.

"Words have specific meanings, and in most cases a patient is not a “captive audience,” therefore the rest of your argument does not apply."

Please look up the legal definition of captive audience. You'll find it is entirely appropriate in this situation. (https://definitions.uslegal.com/c/cap...)

"And if a federal law does exist requiring a doctor to ask such questions, having a state law forbidding such questions puts the doctor in an impossible position – he must break either one law or the other. "

And that was precisely the point: to force the issue into the Federal Court system because it was a bureaucracy making up rules without the legislature's input. Because of the way the ACA was worded, it was given broad law-making authority. The goal was to have the ACA's rule-making ruled unConstitutional by showing this very conflict in light of Constitutional protections.

"what is appropriate in this situation is a state law upholding the rights of doctors and patients to discuss any subject they mutually agree to"

What you forget or ignore is the fact that law enforcement and other government agencies are entitled to view patient records on the flimsiest of excuses. If doctor-patient privilege actually existed, you would have a valid argument. Unfortunately for all of us, that privilege doesn't actually exist in practice. And as I have demonstrated in the cases of Veterans and SS recipients, their Second Amendment rights were in fact infringed as a result of their "confidential" patient records being accessed by government bureaucracies to specifically and unConstitutionally target lawful owners of firearms because of political ideology.

The general lack of privacy from government intrusion is a given these days, but it’s still important to make a distinction between pressure from a professional association and what is required by government law. The civil rights laws you cited are actual laws, enforceable by the government. Professional association guidelines are not. Your previous posts did not really make that distinction, though your current post does. The bigger issue in this thread is what is an appropriate action to take at the state level to counteract federal government intrusions into medical privacy. As I said elsewhere, I think a proper solution would be a state law upholding the rights of doctors and patients to discuss any subject they mutually agree to, and pledging to protect these rights in court against any federal incursion.

Have you read the link provided?

Free speech includes the right of doctors and patients to discuss any subject they wish to, without government compelling or forbidding the discussion of certain topics. The (pre-Trump) feds evidently want to compel doctors to ask certain questions about guns, while various states want to forbid them from doing so. Both are violations of the First Amendment.

What’s relevant here is not the anti-gun liberal agenda, it is the content of the state law that was overturned. And that law clearly violates the First Amendment. A proper state response, and one that upholds individual rights, would be a state law upholding the rights of doctors and patients to discuss any subject they mutually agree to, and pledging to protect these rights in court against any federal incursion.

Meanwhile, I have checked the site for The American College of Physicians and they too are very much anti-Constitutional and provide "guidelines" to their members in that regard. I am using quotes for the term guidelines because, as you have correctly pointed out, it is not a legal requirement, but just one step away. Certain professional associations can put irresistible pressure on their members, whether wrapped in law or "guidelines." Courts acknowledge that certain practices, although not enshrined in law, lead to undesirable effects, as exemplified by private companies making private decisions with respect to hiring of minorities, etc. (the basis of all civil rights laws). I am not ready to dismiss the clear and obvious pressure that these organizations are putting on the pediatrician community to be anti-Constitutional. As to their ties to the Obama administration, I think that the connection is clear and since you have not questioned it, I presume that you agree. It would take some time to make the links, but they're there. In today's world, the links are often obfuscated. As to the database not being confidential - seriously? Snowden's revelations were not enough? Even Trump's advisors' phone calls being recorded and published - should we for a moment even contemplate that our records are and will be private?

It is a back door way of exerting gun control. Part of the ACA requires that doctors inquire about gun ownership ostensibly to provide safety instructions and protect health. Once established the patient is a gun owner it moves the patient to the bottom of the healthcare list motivating those who require health care to get rid of their guns. Neat trick to make the gun owners the ones who make the decision to rid themselves of their weapons.

Please define "instructions", and cite the law that requires pediatricians to follow these instructions, and the penalties for failure to do so.

Words have specific meanings, and in most cases a patient is not a “captive audience,” therefore the rest of your argument does not apply. And if a federal law does exist requiring a doctor to ask such questions, having a state law forbidding such questions puts the doctor in an impossible position – he must break either one law or the other. As I mentioned in another post, what is appropriate in this situation is a state law upholding the rights of doctors and patients to discuss any subject they mutually agree to, and pledging to protect these rights in court against any federal incursion.

Okay, so “anti-gun activists want to use the ACA and instruct doctors to require patient disclosure regarding ownership of firearms as part of treatment.” Unless there is such a law on the books, what anti-gun activists “want” is irrelevant. And even if there is such a law, it does not justify a state law forbidding a consensual verbal exchange between doctor and patient on the subject of guns, or any other subject. What would be appropriate would be a state law upholding the rights of doctors and patients to discuss any subject they mutually agree to, and pledging to protect these rights in court against any federal incursion.

The law in question was a pro-active rebuke of what proponents of the ACA were trying to do via bureaucratic rule-making. Remember, under the ACA the Secretary of Health and Human Services was given broad law-making authority with regard to implementation of provisions of the ACA. One of the policies that came up and was employed against veterans and Social Security recipients was firearm confiscation after unsolicited medical reviews of their mental/emotional state. They were never reported as being dangerous to others, yet because they saw a doctor, their rights to own firearms were infringed and their firearms were confiscated. Now they have to pay to defend a right the government never should have infringed in the first place.

The bill in question recognized the fact that gun ownership is not a mental condition, nor should it be the role of a medical practitioner to step outside their role to be a government agent. The doctor does not have a "right" to question a patient about anything at all. It isn't protected Speech. This isn't a forum where the listener can just walk away. A patient is a captive audience and to turn a medical visit into a political soapbox is not only inappropriate, it is wrong. It is just as wrong as for a university professor to turn their classroom into a convenient political soapbox.

In regards to your assertion that this law constituted a violation of a physician's right of Expression, I would point out that restricting someone from asking an irrelevant question to a captive audience is hardly a restriction of First Amendment rights. What really is at stake is the patient's retention of their Second Amendment rights from attack by a politically motivated doctor - or worse a politically motivated bureaucrat.

The word “directed” has a specific meaning, one that is fundamentally different from the meaning of “encouraged” or “urged”. When discussing political and legal issues on this site, that distinction is important. Many people reading your post will be encouraged to believe that the government requires physicians to ask that question and proactively report all answers to a government agency. I don’t see any evidence that this is the case, and you have not provided any example of such a requirement, which is all that I requested. And health records being potentially “available” to government organizations is not the same thing as a database or registry maintained by a physician’s “government controllers.”

The link I provided earlier. Those are instructions from the association to the pediatricians. Read them. That's why FL passed the law preventing the doctors to ask these questions.

It isn't the doctor's rights which are being infringed upon. It is the patients' rights which are under attack. Anti-gun activists want to use the ACA and instruct doctors to require patient disclosure regarding ownership of firearms as part of treatment. The long and the short of it is that unless the person is openly threatening either someone else or themselves, whether or not they own a firearm is irrelevant to their treatment by medical professionals. Doctors are not part of either the judicial or executive branches, yet they are being conscripted to act as extensions of these authorities.

Proponents of gun control were attempting to use the ACA to create a backdoor gun registry and to use medical practitioners "evaluations" in order to justify firearm confiscation. And all that could happen on the subjective political decision of a bureaucrat or doctor with an agenda without Fourth Amendment due process. In case you were not aware, several states have passed laws that allow for the confiscation of owned firearms from patients deemed mentally or emotionally dangerous without even a court hearing or defense until after the confiscation. In order to get their possessions back, they have to spend their own money to prove they are not a danger - completely the opposite standard of prosecution that is the backbone of the Fifth Amendment.

"When a doctor is directed to ask a certain question and pass the answer up the chain to his government controllers, then that doctor is acting as a surrogate for the government."

Link?

Help me understand your point here. You do acknowledge that the doctor is directed to ask the question? Directed by the semi-private American Academy of Pediatrics. Do I need to do the research to demonstrate that that organization is very much anti-2nd Amendment and has Obama administration ties, or is that connection clear enough? Now, when the data is entered into the health records, do you understand that it is available to multiple government organizations, some not necessarily connected with healthcare? Is the push by the American Academy of Pediatrics to influence parents not to have guns not clear? Is it not obvious that the records are very likely to migrate into a gun registry? The Obama administration ruling to take away gun rights from a large number of older veterans using the VA Healthcare system is not an indication of the overall direction? I do agree that this was a voluntary order, but that was just a tip; the shafting was to follow. That's why the Regressives are so upset - they thought that they were in permanently, but apparently just the taste of the tip was enough to end this rape.

The article you cited in the original post said nothing about compelling doctors to ask this question and report the answers back to the government. If so, that's a separate issue from the one being discussed on this thread. And it is not a legitimate exercise of government power to nullify a law requiring a certain type of speech by passing a law forbidding that same type of speech. Both laws violate the First Amendment.

What "requirement" exactly? The gun lobby implied the Florida law was intended to prevent "harassment" of patients by doctors regarding the gun issue. This is an exceptionally weak argument if the supposed "harassment" occurs within the confines of an consensual doctor-patient relationship. It is no reason to restrict a doctor's First Amendment rights.

Wait a minute. Your previous post said this was not a First Amendment question, on the basis that “a doctor is directed to ask a certain question and pass the answer up the chain to his government controllers.” Now you’re citing the guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics, not any law. Even if the doctor asks questions about guns and enters the answers into a patient’s medical records, you have provided no evidence that the doctor is required to “pass the answer up the chain to his government controllers.” Please provide such evidence, if it in fact exists.

I, too, like that response. Mine is: and where did you graduate in your class, Doc? Should I get a better opinion??