This topic has the doctors on DSGL buzzing. Here is a note I posted
there for them:

Our pediatricians are being taught to TEACH their families how to
make their homes safer — with the examples I gave earlier. In a
way, though, the things they teach are almost predicated on the
assumption that their patients have no common sense.

I think this ideology arises from the area of “preventive medicine.”
The patient doesn’t have smallpox or polio, yet the pediatrician
teaches the parents what the state of the science is concerning the
prevention of those maladies: get vaccinated.

If a person has small children AND firearms in the house, there are
some special considerations to be made. The question is, what
business is it of the doctor to instruct on those considerations?

AND, if he or she chooses to instruct on issues re: firearms, do the
doctors have adequate training in what to teach? I say they do not.

What exactly Is the state of the science? Fact is: nobody really
knows, but we must not fail our basic “prime directive”:

FIRST DO NO HARM.

One can make a case that by advising the family to have no firearms
present, one is possibly setting them up for terrible unintended
consequences.

Our physicians are in desperate need of adequate data to guide their
advice.

IF, that is, they are going to be in the advice giving business…and
apparently our pediatrics cousins have decided to get into that
business (long before firearms issues came to the fore).

The “libertarian” in me would advise the doctor to point out to the
patient that having firearms in the home is a serious decision and
issues such as proper training, storage, maintenance and over all
safety MUST be considered. Now, says the doctor, consider those
things and go find out about more them. [end of doctor's lecure]

The libertarian doctor –that is, the doctor who respects the freedom
and liberty of his patient– would not say “arm” or “disarm.”

Dr. Bill Rogers