Common Risks
Last I looked, there was a fairly long list of common risks and, when sorted according to the actual numbers of deaths per hundred thousand, guns in the home was not near the top.
I seem to recall, for example, that swimming pools actually claim more children's lives than firearms.
Yet I've never seen a question on the form,
"do you have a swimming pool at your home?"
Similarly, there are no questions about kerosene heaters, partly filled gasoline cans, paint thinner soaked rags, or power tools. Also no questions about high performance cars or other transportation, to include jet skis, snowmobiles, and dirt bikes. No questions regarding the various hazardous sports in which I might participate, like snow/water skiing, rock climbing, or mountain biking.
In other words,
"do you have guns in the home?" is a targeted politically driven question.
More kids drown in buckets, but they don't ask about buckets.
Using doctors to ask the question under the plausible-but-bogus guise of "assessing risks" is something of a coup.
"Well, you see, your health involves a lot of different factors, including behavioral factors like smoking, and exposure to certain risks, so we're just trying to get as complete a picture as possible."
No, you're not.
If you were, you'd ask about the damned swimming pool. You'd ask about sports. You'd ask about my driving habits and the length of my commute, and the specific routes I take to work. You'd ask about hazardous chemicals in the garage.
But you don't do that.
Instead, you ask a question that indexes my ability to protect and/or provide for my family.
If you were serious about "risks" you would ask unarmed people why the hell they would leave themselves and their families unprotected against muggers and home invaders. There's a very real risk to being unarmed.
It's not about risk.
It's about discouraging people from owning firearms by demonizing them as a "health risk."
[paranoid]
It's about creating a "harmless" body of data documenting gun owners (confidentially, of course) until the day that guns can be plausibly reclassified as a "social health risk," thus requiring physicians to reveal which patients "pose the greatest social health risk." You know, kind of like they might do with a plague carrier.
[/paranoid]