Anyone go for a Physical lately, and get asked to take "the survey". Gun Control

[Gtscotty]

Everyone on this thread seems pretty cavalier about suicide - just a choice people make. Those who have had their spouses or kids kill themselves rather than getting help for depression would not see it that way. Nor does the medical profession.

I posted the Wyoming stat because it seemed to contrast so much with the way people talk about the freedom, safety and happiness gun people like to associate with states like that. And rather than submit yet another bad social theory in a thread full of them, I dropped that tidbit so people will think a little bit more about their assumptions.

I have no idea if guns make people more likely to end their lives or not. I think it is a shame when people in their prime die, and that includes when they do it to themselves. But I do think that doctors would like to have good stats to understand what is going on, and while that may have political ramifications in how the data is used, data is data.

So basically dancing around the suggestion that higher rates of firearm ownership in States like Wyoming is a problem that drives increased suicide risk? Logic right in line with the article you posted earlier that stated:

"Many lives would likely be saved if people disposed of their firearms, kept them locked away, or stored them outside the home."

My problem with this kind of research is, what possible solutions can they suggest that don't infringe on people's rights? When it comes right down to it if someone has access to firearms and they want to kill themselves, they can... Period. Other than therapy and other treatment options that don't require knowledge of what percentage of people have guns, the only solutions they can offer are disarmament, storage laws, and similar obvious infringements.

As for doctors being required to ask whether you own guns. Its one thing to make nebulous comments about having data available for research being a good thing, but what would be an actual mechanism whereby the doctors prior knowledge of your firearm ownership would serve your well-being? Say you're diagnosed with severe depression and the doctor wants to advise your family to remove firearms from the house, why does he have to have prior knowledge of your possessions to give such advice?

 

[gunhack]

I have been to the VA for primary care physician visit, physical exam, pre-op tests, to far this month in prep for surgery 7 Dec.
I do not recall being questioned about guns.

As far as suicide goes:
The NAS "Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence" 2013 noted that in 2010 firearms were used in 19,000 of the 38,000 or so suicides; gun suicides were 83% fatal, suffocation suicides were 80% fatal.*

I do not believe Less Guns = Less Suicide (see Japan).

NAS "Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review" (2004) Chapter 7 Firearms and Suicide, did a simulation between suicide rate and firearms suicide as a proportion of suicides (FS/S).
"In particular, we find a negative association between the suicide rate and FS/S: in this simulation, if FS/S is a good proxy for [gun] ownership, gun owners are less likely than nonowners to commit suicide."

Sure, gun owners who commit suicide may be assumed more likely to use a gun than a non-gun owner who commits suicide, but owning a gun is not a predictor of suicidal tendancies. (FS/S - firearms suicide rate vs overall suicide rate - may not even be a good proxy for gun ownership.)**
_________________________
* Right-to-Suicide advocates have listed the top twenty methods and rates of "success" as:
1. 99.0% Shotgun to head
2. 97.0% Cyanide
3. 97.0% Gunshot of head
4. 96.4% Shotgun to chest
5. 96.4% Explosives
6. 96.2% Hit by train
7. 93.4% Jump from height
8. 89.5% Gunshot of chest
9. 89.5% Hanging
10. 78.5% Auto crash
11. 77.5% Household toxins
12. 76.5% Set fire to self
13. 73.0% Structure fire
14. 71.0% Carbon Monoxide
15. 70.0% Hit by truck/auto
16. 65.5% Electrocution
17. 65.0% Gunshot of abdomen
18. 63.0% Drowning ocean/lake
19. 58.5% Stab of chest
20. 51.5% Cut throat
**My kids have told me that some of the best memories they cherish are target practice with me on the mountain, at the abandoned rock quarry, and at the gun club. No way would I crap on those memories by suicide with a gun.

I'll take "explosives", Alex, for $100

 

[RX-79G]

So basically dancing around the suggestion that higher rates of firearm ownership in States like Wyoming is a problem that drives increased suicide risk? Logic right in line with the article you posted earlier that started:

"Many lives would likely be saved if people disposed of their firearms, kept them locked away, or stored them outside the home."

My problem with this kind of research is, what possible solutions can they suggest that don't infringe on people's rights? When it comes right down to it if someone has access to firearms and they want to kill themselves, they can... Period. Other than therapy and other treatment options that don't require knowledge ofwhat percentage of people have guns, the only solutions they can offer are disarmament, storage laws, and similar obvious infringements.

As for doctors being required to ask whether you own guns. Its one thing to make nebulous comments about heaving data available for research being a good thing, but what would be an actual mechanism whereby the doctors prior knowledge of your firearm ownership would serve your well-being? Say you're diagnosed with severe depression and the doctor wants to advise your family to remove firearms from the house, why does he have to have prior knowledge of your possessions to give such advice?

If it was proven that depressed people who have access to guns are more likely kill themselves than depressed people who do not, is that something you want to know about?

The head-in-the-sand philosophy of US gun owners is that any information that puts guns in a less positive light must be hidden, shamed, coerced against or simply denied.

I suppose this is because gun owners believe that all public information can only be acted on to make public policy and gun control laws. But it does not. Smart people arm themselves with good information, and if it turns out that the presence of firearms tends to focus depressed people on suicide more than people without guns, then smart people fighting the blues would act for their own best interests and put the guns away or at least be aware of the pitfall.

As for data collection, that doesn't mean that YOUR doctor will be using the data to treat YOU. It means that if you want to learn something about how people think, you have to have some way of making and testing a theory. Solid statistics is one method.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

Well, at the physical I had.. I first to took off my Glock 26 from it's IWB holster and handed it to the Nurse, then my Glock 43 in the shoulder holster and put that in her other hand, and then my Glock 42 in the ankle holster which the Dr. put in his coat.

After that the doctor didn't ask many questions.

Deaf

*sigh*

Unfortunately, South Carolina doesn't allow me this option:

23-15-215M:

A permit issued pursuant to this section does not authorize a permit holder to carry a concealable weapon into a:

(9) hospital, medical clinic, doctor's office, or any other facility where medical services or procedures are performed unless expressly authorized by the employer;

 

[Carl N. Brown]

"Many lives would likely be saved if people disposed of their firearms, kept them locked away, or stored them outside the home."

In many jurisdictions with restrictive gun laws, one reason allowed for a gun permit is living under a credible death threat (Northern Ireland is/was one such jurisdiction, some US jurisdictions with restrictive gun permits expedite a gun permit under those circumstances). If a person under a credible threat of being murdered voluntarily disarms, the life that would be saved could easily be the wrong life.

Kellerman added a caveat to his own findings that presence of a gun was associated with higher homicide: "It is possible that reverse causation accounted for some of the association we observed between gun ownership and homicide.” In other words, the people most likely to arm themselves for self-defense are also likely to have been threatened with criminal violence.

Most of my life, my interest in guns was recreational. There are outdoor sports more hazadous than hunting or target shooting. When at the end of an afternoon on the mountain target shooting, listening to the NASCAR race on the radio, BBQing, I would borrow my son's ATV to ride out to the 2nd TVA power tower to watch the sundown. My son figuratively ate fingernails til I returned, for riding the ATV was more dangerous than shooting an AR or AK. I was 62 y.o. at least the last time I did that. I'll be amazed is this current generation of extreme sports fanatics live to 62.

Steven Levitt famously pointed out, after hearing a couple declare they would not let their child play at home A because the A family had guns but would let their kid play at home B with a swimming pool, that statistically your kid is 100 times more likely to drown in a pool in the backyard than be shot by the gun in the master bedroom nightstand.

 

[morcey2]

Instead of having to re-type the whole thing, this is the experience that I had when our Dr's office merged with a larger company:

We've been going to the same doctor for almost 17 years. He's a shooter and he knows I'm one also. We used to talk guns all the time. His clinic merged with one of the larger mega-clinics and his practice changed significantly. All of the hunting and firearms magazines disappearing was the first clue that something was off.

The first visit I had after the merger was interesting. On the way back to the exam room, the medical assistant (who is a very good friend) whispered "answer NO" to me, confusing the heck out of me. As we were going into the exam room, she was joined by a social worker supplied by the new owners. He introduced himself and immediately went into a list of questions, starting with the same "Do you have any guns in the home?"

"No"

"Are you sure? This is just statistical information. It's not going anywhere else."

"Yep. Positive."

Then it went into a bunch of other questions about alcohol and tobacco use, illegal drugs, history of violence and such. The interesting thing that I found out from the Dr. was that there were two different pieces of paper being filled out by the social worker. The one with the answers to the gun questions had my name and patient number on it. The one with all of the other questions on it didn't. I guess there were about 8 gun-related questions in all if I had answered in the affirmative.

When our Dr. came in, he said that as of that point, none of his patients had been gun owners and wasn't sure how that happened. The ironic part was that the Dr. was sporting a nice bruise and cuts on his left hand from a slide bite that had happened the weekend before.

Until it's under oath, the answer is "No."

Matt

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

"Do you have any guns?"

"No, I've got a sore throat."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, it's really painful to swallow. I'm also running a fever of 102F and I'm just about to puke all over your shoes. Now, will somebody shove a wooden stick in my mouth so I can say 'Ahhh!' and get some medication to take care of this?"

 

[Carl N. Brown]

"If it was proven that depressed people who have access to guns are more likely kill themselves than depressed people who do not, is that something you want to know about?"
One, it has not been proven.
Two, in the 1970s I was in a suicide volunteer crisis center and none of the training or the experience of call handlers indicated that guns were a causative factor of suicidal tendancies.
Three, the CDC advocates of the germ theory of gun violence (guns = the germ) have already decided it is their crusade to generate research to prove to Congress that the "germ" needs to be eradicated to solve the problem, same as the polio virus was eradicated to prevent polio. Scientific method is not the generation of research to prove an apriori assumption, so I am skeptickal of waiting for their proofs tailored to support their theory.
(For the record I believe the subset of people who commit gun violence have more in common with the subset of people who commit non-gun violence than they have with the superset of people who own guns or the superset of people who don't own guns. I believe the subset of people who commit violence gun or non-gun have a lot in common, and that the superset of people who don't commit violence have a lot in common whether they own guns or not. I believe that violence fits the immune system failure model of disease much better than it fits the germ theory of disease. Gun violence is not caused by owning a gun any more than non-gun violence is caused by not owning a gun. Violence whether gun or non-gun has common causes. I do not accept the "gun as germ" theory nor the crusade of the clique at CDC for a "Salk Vaccine" crusade against guns.)

 

[RX-79G]

One, it has not been proven.

Of course it is unproven. You have to collect the data to come to any such conclusion. Data comes from surveys. Hence the "if" in my post, and the survey in the OP.

Three, the CDC advocates of the germ theory of gun violence (guns = the germ) have already decided it is their crusade to generate research to prove to Congress that the "germ" needs to be eradicated to solve the problem, same as the polio virus was eradicated to prevent polio.

Please support this statement.

 

[ontarget]

First of all any of you who don't see this for what it is should wake the hell up. Congress would never allow a national gun owner registration but if the government has access to EVERYONE'S medical records (for statistical collection purposes only I'm sure) then it seems to me like the leftists just started registering gun owners. WAKE UP!!!!!

 

[RX-79G]

First of all any of you who don't see this for what it is should wake the hell up. Congress would never allow a national gun owner registration but if the government has access to EVERYONE'S medical records (for statistical collection purposes only I'm sure) then it seems to me like the leftists just started registering gun owners. WAKE UP!!!!!

Absolutely nothing in this thread is about access to medical records.

 

[AirForceShooter]

I love the question "do you participate in sports that require eye protection?"

AFS

 

[Kaeto]

My Doctor while not a gun person herself has absolutely no problems with them. How do I know? Because I routinely open carry in her office.

 

[Ronald Pickett]

Wyoming has the highest suicide rate in the US at 29.6 out of 100,000. That's 6.6 more than even Alaska, and 17 more than the national average.

But in Wyoming it takes very few suicides to make the "rate" high. Count the population in thousands, not millions. There are more Pronghorns living in Wyoming than people. Bogus math to make your point.

 

[chicharrones]

Everyone on this thread seems pretty cavalier about suicide - just a choice people make. Those who have had their spouses or kids kill themselves rather than getting help for depression would not see it that way. Nor does the medical profession.

My ex was found dead by my daughter when my daughter was 9. My ex OD'd on prescription drugs. It wasn't her first time trying something like that, but I wasn't around to prevent it the final time.

It pissed me off to no end that my ex was selfish enough to put my daughter in that situation.

However, if my kids are grown and successful, and if I find myself to have a disease like cancer that will financially harm my family due to lack of insurance*, I would prefer to reserve my right to save my family the financial burden by ending it. They would have to move on without me regardless, but I'd prefer them not to be in debt over it.

*thanks to the ACA and the now unaffordable premiums.

 

[Sam1911]

But in Wyoming it takes very few suicides to make the "rate" high. Count the population in thousands, not millions. There are more Pronghorns living in Wyoming than people. Bogus math to make your point.

For fairness, that's pretty much the definition of a "rate." It isn't total numbers, it's how many people out of every thousand or hundred thousand. That way a state with 100,000 people and that had 100 suicides last year is properly compared as equivalent to a state that had 10,000,000 people, 10,000 of whom decided to end it all that year.

It isn't bogus math, it's one of the fundamental principles of statistical measurements.

If this wasn't the case, then a town of 500 people which was host to a terrible gang war and saw 250 people killed would be said to have the same murder rate as a city of 900,000 people which saw 250 killings. And that's clearly absurd. One has a murder rate for that year of 1 in 2, or 50%. The other has a rate of 1 in 3,600, or about 0.02%

 

[buck460XVR]

I don't see the big deal. Got asked at the supermarket last night to take a survey. The thought it was a government conspiracy against eating food never entered my mind. I just said "no thank you", just like at the doctor's office and just like on the phone when the NRA calls and asks me about taking a survey. Again, what's the big deal?

 

[OC-Trainer]

The head-in-the-sand philosophy of US gun owners is that any information that puts guns in a less positive light must be hidden, shamed, coerced against or simply denied.

Smart people arm themselves with good information, and if it turns out that the presence of firearms tends to focus depressed people on suicide more than people without guns, then smart people fighting the blues would act for their own best interests and put the guns away or at least be aware of the pitfall.

Two of the best lines I've read in a while on this subject and I couldn't agree more.

I'll never understand the denial that takes place when in comes to stats and facts on this topic. Why wouldn't you want to know accurate information so you can make the best informed choice for you and yours?

 

[george burns]

My Pain Management Doctor, is a shooter, I got him started about 5 years ago. He can't wait for me to come in to tell me about his latest toy. He also asked me to get him a pocket knife like mine, which I did, "he never paid me for it". But I learned a long time ago when someone doesn't go into their pocket, you aren't getting paid, that goes for eating out with frends as an example. He says I am the most stable guy he knows.
But this doctor is my Primary, whom I found to be ok for what I needed, like basic medical attention if necessary.
We aren't friends, he didn't even know he was my primary, "it says it on my insurance card" he does ask me if I need any prescriptions filled, to which I say no, I don't take anything.
As far as what the one gent mentioned about straightening out the medical records to reflect the real state of health, I have done that with both doctors several times and they still come back wrong.
So the last thing I want to do is fill out anything that may have something to do with age, health, and their ability to limit my 2nd amedment rights, especially seeing how they can't seem to fill out a form properly.
The less they have, the better it is. Last year they wasted 7 months of my life going for cadiac tests, ending up with nothing found and the head of Indian River Hospitals cardiac unit asking me who and why they even sent me there for a heart Cathater test, "a dangerous procedure under anesthetic", especially since he said my heart was in perfect shape. I explained I owned a health Club, and still do 1 hour of cardio every other day.
To which he said , "and they sent you here". for this test, you could never do that if you had what she suspected.
He shook his head, because he knew which doctor sent me there, and that she had financial problems, that everyine knew about except my primary doctor, as he handed me a piece of cake from a doctors party. I say this because you have to be your own advocate, I was coming in the door from the Hospital, and the cardioligist was calling me to take more tests, which I refused until she told me why, which she refused to do, so she dismissed me as a patient. I started getting bills in the 5-10 thousand dolar range, I refused to pay any, "they were covered" but she sent me 5 bills in 1 day for the same amount. Of course I reported her to every institution possible, the bills stopped the collection agency stopped and I remembered what my dad said, stay away from doctors unless you are really sick, or they will kill you.
I sure am not going to trust anyone as inept as these folks with a survey that could come back to bite me in the butt, we don't know where it's going, that's the thing.

 

[OC-Trainer]

Regarding the survey: I would just refuse to take it, like others have already mentioned. Having said that, perhaps the "hidden psych eval" isn't just to determine suicidal ideations, maybe it is also in place to look for homicidal ideations, too.

 

[Gtscotty]

I'll never understand the denial that takes place when in comes to stats and facts on this topic. Why wouldn't you want to know accurate information so you can make the best informed choice for you and yours?

Regarding the survey: I would just refuse to take it, like others have already mentioned. Having said that, perhaps the "hidden psych eval" isn't just to determine suicidal ideations, maybe it is also in place to look for homicidal ideations, too.

.....? If you think telling your doctor whether or not you have guns is of great statistical and societal value, why would you refuse to answer the survey? Do you think the information on gun ownership that doctors are collecting is accurate given your inclinations and those of most others on this thread?

 

[RPRNY]

Everyone on this thread seems pretty cavalier about suicide - just a choice people make. Those who have had their spouses or kids kill themselves rather than getting help for depression would not see it that way. Nor does the medical profession.

I posted the Wyoming stat because it seemed to contrast so much with the way people talk about the freedom, safety and happiness gun people like to associate with states like that. And rather than submit yet another bad social theory in a thread full of them, I dropped that tidbit so people will think a little bit more about their assumptions.

I have no idea if guns make people more likely to end their lives or not. I think it is a shame when people in their prime die, and that includes when they do it to themselves. But I do think that doctors would like to have good stats to understand what is going on, and while that may have political ramifications in how the data is used, data is data.

Have you ever been to Wyoming?

Mid March on the eastern plains with snow on the ground since October, - 17 degrees, and the wind howling incessantly (24/7) and you could have the entire cast of the Victoria's Secret Fall Catalogue having just taken delivery of a case of bourbon banging on your bedroom door and you'd still be giving serious consideration to ending it all. The fact that anybody makes it to June is a testament to the moral fiber and sheer toughness of the average Wyoman.

 

[Deanimator]

It's a lib agenda they are pushing. IF they were concerned about you or your kids they would ask about pools, med storage, driving habits, Drano storage, etc, since all of them kill more people than a firearm in the home.

They're concerned about POWER, not you and your kids.

This is part of a concerted plan to "other" gun owners and to cause gun ownership to be viewed as aberrant.

 

[Deanimator]

But I do think that doctors would like to have good stats to understand what is going on, and while that may have political ramifications in how the data is used, data is data.

A certain group of doctors have a well defined plan to discourage, and ultimately outlaw private firearms ownership and would like to have (or fabricate) stats that would support that.

This has about as much to do with "medicine" as eugenics and phrenology.

 

[OC-Trainer]

.....? If you think telling your doctor whether or not you have guns is of great statistical and societal value, why would you refuse to answer the survey? Do you think the information on gun ownership that doctors are collecting is accurate given your inclinations and those of most others on this thread

George Burns is the OP, I believe. I was suggesting that if he had a problem with the survey, then don't take it. Which, of course, is his right.

And no, I don't trust much of the self-reported information that comes out regarding firearms.