Keeping Guns Away from Children

Twice this past week, students in New York City public schools have brought loaded guns to school. The New York Times notes that these two incidents - one involving a 15-year-old student at an "early college" high school with a strong academic reputation, and one involving an 11-year-old elementary school student -- were two of four times this year where guns were seized in New York City schools. Last year, The Times reported, there were nine such episodes. These latest incidents resulted in the arrest of the 15-year-old and the arrest of the gun-owner grandfather of the 11-year-old.

As far back as 2011, we blogged about efforts by pediatricians to address gun safety by asking parents whether there is a gun in their home as a first step to beginning a conversation about ways to keep that gun away from children. We followed up in later blogs to discuss efforts to block even this basic step towards gun safety and can now report that the Florida ban on asking about guns in the home was upheld by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. A look at this decision in The Miami Herald lays out the history of this law.

Let's pause for a moment to make it clear that we are not taking a stand on gun ownership. The issue of keeping guns out of our schools and out of the hands of kids is something else entirely.

Notably, neither of the schools in this week's events had metal detectors, which are common in many New York City public high schools and elsewhere. A report last September by WNYC noted that approximately 90,000 New York City public school students go through a scanning process each day. But there are real issues with metal detectors.  The likelihood of having to go through a scanner varies by borough, as well as by the racial and ethnic make-up of the student body. As the WNYC report noted, "getting scanned before school every day can mean earlier wake ups, long waits and lots of hassle." Having experienced scanning while visiting schools, your blogger can report that it is much like going through airport security every day. And while metal detectors and scanners may keep guns outside school buildings, they don't keep guns out of kids' hands elsewhere.

So, what can parents do to help make their children safer, in school and out? Our colleagues at The American Academy of Pediatrics have some common sense information and talking points about guns and kids that addresses families that have guns -- and those that don't. It includes statistics on how having a gun in the home affects family safety and questions to ask other parents before your child visits their home. It's worth reading.

photo credit: Ken via flickr cc

Bad News About a Bad Law

Back in May 2011, we wrote about a then pending Florida law that would prohibit physicians from asking parents about whether there are guns in their homes. The question, when asked by a pediatrician or family physician, can open the topic of gun safety and allow the doctor to counsel the parent about what is needed to make sure that their own and other people's children are kept safe. 

Gun advocates claimed that this would constitute harassment and somehow lead to records being kept by physicians as to which of their patient families had guns present in their homes. Opponents of the law pointed to limits on a physician's judgment, freedom of speech issues, and the appalling number of children injured or killed by playing with guns found in their home or another house at which they play.

The law was signed by Florida Governor Rick Scott shortly after our original post about it. In September of 2012 we were able to report that Federal District Court Judge Marcia G. Cooke had ruled that the Florida law was unconstitutional and issued a permanent injunction which blocked its enforcement.

Late last week, we learned that the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, overturned Judge Cooke's injunction, which means the law can take full effect. You can read the complete 160 plus page decision and the dissent by Judge Charles R.Wilson here.

We hope that some of the groups that brought the initial lawsuit against this law will continue to seek to overturn it. The next stop for this would be the United States Supreme Court. We will continue to follow and report on new developments. 

Court Bars Limits on Physician Gun Counseling

Unless you spent your summer in an isolated locale with no news broadcasts, newspapers, or internet (is there such a place anymore?) you know that this has been a summer punctuated by devastating, deadly gun violence. So we were particularly pleased to see an article in the August issue of AAP News noting that U.S. District Court Judge Marcia G. Cooke has ruled that a 2011 Florida law which restricted pediatricians from asking about whether there are firearms in a home is unconstitutional. Judge Cooke has issued a permanent injunction which blocks enforcement of this law.

We had previously written about our concerns with this legislation, noting that it was intended to counter an initiative on the part of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and others to make sure that families were aware of the need to keep guns away from children and to counsel patients and families on the need to store guns safely. As we noted in our prior blog on this topic, this was not an effort to limit gun ownership, only to improve safety.

The judge's ruling followed a lawsuit brought by the Florida branches of the AAP, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American College of Physicians, as well as several individual physicians. The plaintiffs argued that the law limited their right to free speech under the First Amendment because it did not allow them to exchange information about gun safety with their patients. The judge agreed and also noted that the law prevented patients from hearing preventive health information from their doctors.

There are several other states in which similar legislation to the Florida law has been proposed, but not yet enacted. We hope that the ruling in Florida gives those in other states pause before they push ahead with limiting the rights of physicians to try to keep their patients safe.

Photo: flguardian2 / Creative Commons