UK Proposes Adding Gun Ownership Records to Medical Files

UK Doctors
UK Doctors
NRA-ILA
NRA – ILA

Charlotte, NC –-(Ammoland.com)- With warrantless home inspections and an onerous registration and licensing scheme, UK gun owners already have little refuge from the prying eyes of the state.

However, some law enforcement and Home Office officials are keen to extend gun owner surveillance into the doctor’s office.

On November 9 2014, The Sunday Times published an article titled, “Doctors are told to report on mental state of gun owners.”  The title aptly summarizes plans to enlist doctors to inform police when a patient exhibits mental or physical characteristics (including terminal illness) the doctors deem incompatible with gun ownership.  In explaining why he wanted to draft physicians as informants, Chief Constable Andy Marsh of Hampshire Constabulary lamented, “Lots of things happen in people’s lives which the police don’t know about.”

Most troubling, the item reported that “Owners of shotguns and other firearms are to have medical files permanently marked.”  In other words, gun license information would be placed in a patient’s medical file and automatically supplied to their doctor.

Marsh’s words to the Times echo comments he made in a June 11 meeting of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) Firearms and Explosives Licensing Working Group.  According to minutes of the meeting, Marsh said, “Firearms licensing needs an enduring marker on the medical records of people that hold a firearm or shotgun.”  If the name Andy Marsh sounds familiar, it might be because last month we reported on his vocal support for surprise warrantless firearm storage inspections.

Serious talks of implementing a surveillance scheme incorporating firearm licenses into medical records have been going on since 2009.  At that time, the British Medical Association and the ACPO came to an agreement on the topic, with the BMA stating, “In the BMA’s view such a system can be appropriate, provided it is used as part of the ordinary care given to a patient.  It can, for example, be a useful aide-memoire, to remind doctors that the patient has, or may have, access to a firearm.”  Anti-gun advocates again pushed the policy in 2010 in the wake of a high-profile shooting in the County of Cumbria.

Unfortunately, the United States hasn’t been immune to this type of intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship.  In California, Illinois, and New York, healthcare providers have been deputized as gun control enforcement agents, tasked with alerting police when a patient displays undesirable behavior.   Because these states also have registration schemes, the police then cross-check these reports against firearm transfer or licensing databases to determine if the subject of the report is on record as having a firearm.  The report itself may be enough to cost the individual his or her Second Amendment rights, with nothing more than after-the-fact opportunity for a hearing masquerading as due process.

As bad as this is, however, the patient-provider relationship in these states is at least not colored by the provider having direct access to records of the individual’s firearm ownership information.  In contrast, the UK system would apparently alert a physician to a patient’s status as a gun owner when the doctor opens the patient’s medical file.  This exposes all gun-owning patients to whatever personal biases a given healthcare provider may have against firearms and their owners.

NRA has long recognized the privacy and trust concerns inherent in medical personnel taking on an active role in enforcing gun control.  That’s why NRA has supported legislation in Florida, Missouri, and Montana designed to keep medical practitioners from collecting information on gun ownership that’s irrelevant to the patient’s individual care.  Further, vital language was included in the Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as Obamacare) that prohibits the law from being used to collect information on firearms and firearm owners or to discriminate against owners or users of firearms in access to and delivery of health-related services.  Not coincidentally, the Obama’s administration’s nominee for U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, has advocated for the repeal of these provisions.

President Obama has embraced the UK as model for gun control policy.  The extreme nature of that endorsement becomes ever clearer, as what little rights and privacies UK gun owners cling to continue to erode.

About:
Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visit: www.nra.org

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Eric

Micro chip inserted….
Real time electronic montoring computers/phones/vehicle gps centrally located and mapped with real time and recorded data to see who was where and when with who. See everyone anywhere anytime.

ray hampton

what will be the next step

Eric

UK gives no self defense rights , you have the right to be a victim. The American people are tired of being victims and being disarmed because of criminals and insane people.