Aprescription for gun safety
Pediatricians don’t talk enough to families about firearm safety; this needs to change
Iam a pediatrician, gun owner and proud son of two police officers. Growing up, I learned that guns are weapons that can kill. In my childhood home, all weapons were locked away, yet readily accessible to my parents if they needed to defend their children and property. Parents need to balance their Second Amendment right as Americans with their responsibility for the safety of their children, but not enough parents or caregivers do. In recent weeks in the Houston area alone, three children in separate incidents have accidentally shot themselves in the neck, head or face with a gun belonging to a parent or caregiver. Two of those kids are now dead.
A Houston Chronicle story last week went into great detail about home-based gun safety conversations and other preventive actions that parents and caregivers can take (“The grief of gunplay” Page A1, Tuesday). Pediatricians need to be a greater part of the awareness equation than we now are. We ask other questions of parents: Is there a smoker in the home? Is domestic violence a problem at home? Do the children have access to a pool? Is the pool secured by a locked gate?
Why don’t more of us ask about guns?
Florida doctors have a legal reason they don’t, and it’s an unfortunate one: The Florida Legislature in 2011 essentially slapped a gag on doctors preventing them from asking routine questions about gun ownership at home. The law is being challenged and remains in place. But what about the rest of us?
Annual wellness checkups that children are supposed to receive, and which are covered by most private insurance plans, as well as CHIP and Medicaid, are the perfect platform for the inquiry. Indeed, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children’s physicians “provide anticipatory guidance to children and their families regarding keeping children safe from injury, including restriction of access to guns.” But the recommendation comes up short as it does not provide talking points for pediatricians to use, and that’s part of the problem. In the vacuum of information, it’s been my experience, and data also show, that pediatricians aren’t having these potentially life-saving conversations with parents and children about proper gun safety.
According to two published surveys of pediatricians, doctors query parents and guardians about firearm ownership 50 percent of the time during checkups or fewer. Clearly, that’s not nearly enough intervention. Informal polling of my colleagues and patient families confirms this awareness gap. More alarming for me as a responsible gun owner who knows how to safely store my weapons, if firearm safety is talked about, pediatricians
will generally advise parents and guardians to lock their weapons away, offering no specifics. Many of my colleagues — some of them reticent because of hyper-political gun-control rhetoric — feel they do not have the expertise to confidently broach the topic. Training in medical school and beyond must address this dangerous gap. It is important to get the conversation going with parents. As the recent shootings show, failure to do so can have tragic consequences. My conversation goes like this: The only way to completely eliminate the risk for your child to accidentally shoot himself is to not have guns in the home. If you bring a gun into the home, you accept the risk that your kid could harm himself or others with that same weapon. According to the NORC at the University of Chicago, 31 percent of American households have at least one gun in them. Don’t own a gun? There is a good chance your child will visit another home with a gun in it. There are ways to reduce the risk of children harming themselves with guns. First and foremost, you need to frequently talk to your children about guns. Talk about gun safety in the same vein as you would when you caution them against talking to strangers. Talk about gun safety over family dinner. Talk about it when driving to school. Tell children that guns are dangerous and to always assume they are loaded. If they do see a gun, tell them to run away and immediately inform an adult, as the National Rifle Association’s gunsafety program advises.
Second, as I tell parents, if you choose to have guns in your home, lock them away. For weapons not intended for defensive purposes, place a trigger lock on all weapons and put them in a combination-based gun safe. Key-based safes are inadequate because keys are easily found. Of the three local children who recently shot themselves, the only one who survived, a 7-year-old who shot himself in the forehead, found the key to his grandfather’s gun cabinet.
A purpose of guns is to protect your home and family from threats. Defensive weapons should be kept in quick-access safes that are rapid-combination or fingerprint-based, and parents should practice taking them out. Parents who are gun owners also should go to the gun range and take lessons from experts to increase their shooting proficiency.
I am not a parent, but when I do have kids, I will still have guns in my home. I will place a trigger lock on my Remington 1100 and lock it away in my combination gun safe. As for my Glock 19, it will be in my rapidaccess safe. Meantime, I’m going to annoy my children and counsel yours about gun safety.