Putting the Conversation about Gun Ownership and Safety in Context

Excerpt

In this issue of JGIM, Brendan Parent presents the relevant facts about the risks of gun ownership, and makes it clear that physicians can have a beneficial role in educating patients and their families about these risks, without violating their rights to privacy and to own guns.1 In order to avoid jeopardizing “the patient’s trust in the physician,” physicians should broach the topic of gun ownership in a “manner least likely to create offense”; thus, he or she attempts to craft recommendations that “promote neutrality, privacy, and respect.” It is hard to disagree much with his sensible-sounding recommendations. However, my concern with this piece is that it does not go far enough in describing the current contentious cultural and political context of gun ownership in the United States. In such a context, physicians’ efforts to have conversations about gun ownership and safety are seriously imperiled. …