The guide's authors complain that doctors have been reluctant to broach with patients the sensitive topic of guns. They even suggest physicians may incur liability for failure to ask a patient about guns at home if an accident should occur later. Any private behaviors with health consequences are fair game for investigation in the examination room. But this expansive definition of what constitutes the doctor's business gives the doctor far too much power. It belittles patients and discounts their ability to decide risk management issues for themselves.
Most doctors are instinctively wary of asking their patients about guns in their homes.
They understand that firearm ownership is normative behavior in America and that many Americans consider it a fundamental right. Many doctors themselves own guns and recognize the issues of empowerment and home defense they would be tampering with if they brought up the subject. Doctors also know that to taint this trusting relationship with a pitch for gun control or any other political cause is unethical conduct. With the doctor-patient relationship under assault from all sides, one would think the AMA would try to shore it up. Instead, the AMA is hammering at its foundation.