It was sometime in 2014, at a physician’s appointment when I still lived in Pennsylvania. The nurse came in to take my vital signs and ask the usual questions about my health. Then she asked me if we had any firearms in the house. I responded that such was none of the doctor’s or her business, and that I found the question offensive.

Now comes this from The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Before playdates, ask about guns at home | Expert Opinion

As a pediatrician and a parent, I approach the question of gun ownership by focusing on general safety. I ask about guns in the same breath as I ask about car seats, pools, and food allergies.

by Katie Lockwood, For The Inquirer | Tuesday, June 20, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Sending your kid on a playdate at a friend’s house? The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that you ask whether the family has guns at home.

And at this point, I recommend that the American Academy of Pediatrics take a long walk off a short pier.

One out of three homes with kids has guns, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Of those, only one out of five homes lock up their guns and store ammunition separately.

If you live in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, and Dr Lockwood, “a pediatrician with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and associate professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania,” must either live in Philly or at least reasonably close by, and ought to know that Philadelphians have sought concealed carry permits in huge numbers due to the terrible murder rate, and if you have a firearm for family or personal protection, the last thing you are going to do is “lock up (your) guns and store ammunition separately.” When some crazed junkie is trying to break in, or the gang-bangers are out shooting up the street and perhaps your home, when seconds count, the last thing you’ll find practical is having to unlock a safe for your weapons, or go to another room to get ammunition.

Yet the question often goes unasked because we don’t know how to broach a potentially awkward conversation. Others may assume their friends don’t own guns or, if they do, know how to store them safely.

So how do you ask the question? And what do you do if they have guns?

If people “don’t know how to broach a potentially awkward conversation,” could it possibly be because they realize that it’s none of their f(ornicating) business?

As a pediatrician and a parent, I approach the question of gun ownership by focusing on general safety. I ask about guns at the same time as I inquire about car seats, pools, and food allergies:

“Without judgment, wondering if you have any guns in your home? If so, I would ask that they are locked up and stored safely. Also, we don’t have any food or pet allergies. Looking forward to getting together!”

If I was a parent with a minor child in the City of Brotherly Love, I would not take my child to see Dr Lockwood. When a physician or his office inquires about firearms, they are entering the information into your medical records, and, with the HITECH Act of 2009, which mandates that medical records be digitized, ostensibly so that other physicians can access your records if needed, it also creates a record that the federal or state government could search, a backdoor way of instituting gun registration. Pennsylvania does not maintain a firearms registry, and under Pennsylvania 18 § 6111.4, neither the state, nor any local government, nor any law enforcement agency in the Commonwealth can maintain a firearms registry.

And if pediatricians are asking children about whether their parents have firearms, without their parents present, those pediatricians should be sued into penury.

Of course, you can’t trust the government when it comes to firearms. William Teach noted, on June 18^th, that:

armed IRS agents rolled into Great Falls’ (Montana) Highwood Creek Outfitters Wednesday and seized dozens of boxes of ATF form 4473s, the background check form containing information on gun purchasers.

The agents hit the store prior to regular business hours, KRTV reported.

Store owner Tom Van Hoose said, “At 7:30, I came in and they pulled in behind me with 20 heavily armed agents.”

Van Hoose believes his store is targeted because he sells guns the White House opposes: “I can only assume that it’s because of the style of weapons that we have and the press that’s so against them. The current administration seems to be hell-bent on getting those guns out of the hands of average Americans.”

The ATF form 4473 has a gun purchaser’s name, address, birthdate, state/city of birth, gender, social security number, and the serial number of any guns purchased in the store. The information is perfectly suited for use in a registry or registry database.

Montana neither requires the registration of firearms nor a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

As for asking parents of your kids’ friends, it’s pretty laughable. “Without judgment, wondering if you have any guns in your home?” Of course she’s exercising judgment; her entire article is an exercise in judgment. The only surprising thing is that her first name isn’t Karen. When Dr Lockwood continues, if someone answers affirmatively that they have a firearm, “I would ask that they are locked up and stored safely,” she’s telling the person asked, ‘If your weapons are not locked away to where they are useless, my kid ain’t coming to your place!’

Before hosting a playdate, I volunteer this information, hoping to destigmatize and normalize asking:

“Hello! Just so you know, we are a smoke-free, gun-free home with a dog and two cats. We don’t have a pool, but bring some boots for muddy play in the creek with adult supervision. Looking forward to seeing you soon.”

I doubt many of the bad guys read the Inquirer, so Dr Lockwood is almost certainly safe, even after having told everybody that there are no firearms in her home. But her statement, if it’s spoken in person the way she wrote it in her OpEd piece, sounds just so darned pretentious.

Dr Lockwood is, of course, a free human being, with the same freedom of speech as anyone else, and if she wishes to stick her nose into other people’s business ask other people if they own firearms, she is perfectly within her rights. But I, too, am a free human being, with my own free speech rights, and it is my right to urge people to react negatively to the question she wants other to ask.