Florida Governor Rick Scott Liberates Doctors From Burdens Of The First Amendment

We at Wonkette are not experts in Constitutional law or contemporary American jurisprudence, but it seems to us that the Amendments are supposed to be of equal importance and subjected to the same standards of inquiry. So we were surprised (but not really that surprised, actually, now that we think about it for a minute) to learn that the Second Amendment is more important than the First Amendment, but only for doctors, and only if they live in Florida.

Gov. Rick Scott announced Monday that his administration will pursue a court appeal to defend the state's controversial "Docs vs. Glocks" law, which makes it a crime for doctors to ask patients if they own guns.

The 2011 "Firearm Owners' Privacy Act"—one of a series of NRA-backed, aggressive pro-gun laws passed by Florida's conservative Legislature in recent years—aims at keeping physicians from gathering information on patients' weapons while discussing their health risk factors. ( Decades of studies have shown that even law-abiding, responsible gun owners and their families have higher risks of death by gunshot when they keep a firearm in the home.)

But it’s ok, you guys. This is about protecting patients! Don't you want to protect patients?? Parents don’t like it when they take their kid to the doctor for a sore throat, and doctor is all “blah blah blah, smoking around your kid and whatnot” or "blah blah, something about diet and exercise" and they ESPECIALLY do not like it when their doctor warns them about the risks of keeping a firearm in the home. That just crosses the LINE.

"Patients don't like being interrogated about whether or not they own guns when they take their child with a sore throat to a pediatrician, nor do they like being interrogated in an emergency room when their Little Leaguer broke his leg sliding into first base," the NRA's gun for hire in Florida, longtime firearms lobbyist Marion Hammer , told the Tampa Tribune  last fall.

First of all, the joke is on lobbyist Marion Hammer, because one in five Floridians are uninsured and probably don't even go to the doctor, with or without their fictional kid who is in Little League. Anyway, in sum, the true test of freedom is your willingness to use the Second Amendment to bludgeon all the other Amendments, but mostly for doctors and primarily in places like Florida.

 [Mother Jones]