Doctors Prevented From Questioning Patients About Guns Fight Back

Does your private physician have the 'free speech' right to inquire about and document your gun ownership (and presumably then be subject to reporting it to the government as a 'mandated reporter')? How do we balance the safety needs of the many with the privacy of a few?

This legal case may have roots in the Aurora, CO mass shooter who was under the care of a university psychiatrist at the time of his massacre.

The Denver Post: CENTENNIAL — The first time they met, he told her he wanted to kill people, and, by their last visit, she was worried enough that she broke the law herself. James Holmes' former psychiatrist testified Tuesday that she was so concerned Holmes might be a danger to the public in the month before the Aurora theater shooting that she contacted police and Holmes' mother the day of her last session with him — a violation of health care privacy laws, she conceded. But Dr. Lynne Fenton said she ultimately decided against taking further action. Holmes' confessed thoughts of homicide were too generalized, and — even though prosecutors contend he had already amassed a small arsenal — he didn't tell Fenton about specific plans. "He never met the criteria for me to hospitalize him," she said Tuesday. "I guess I always sort of hoped," she added later, "he would maybe come back for treatment."
That tension — Fenton's concern about what her patient might do and her limits in what she would do to stop him — punctuated one of the most significant days of the Aurora theater shooting trial so far.