Sunday, July 15, 2012

Unsafe : Guns & Minnesota Child Care


The issue of  transparency, and accountability relating to safety questions, when it comes to children, and to firearms in their environment is one that the NRA would like to prevent people from legally being able to ask.  In Florida, there was for example, an NRA supported ALEC promoted law that pediatricians couldn't ask about firearms.  That law was overturned in September 2011.
It should be legal for child care providers to be required to provide information on their firearm ownership in homes where they care for children in Minnesota.
Here's why, from the Time magazine article on the court overturning of the Florida law.
Gunshot wounds account for one in 25 admissions to pediatric trauma centers in the U.S., which is why Florida pediatricians recoiled when a precedent-setting law went into effect in June, making the state the first in the country to prohibit doctors from asking their patients about gun safety in the home.
In August, the Florida chapters of three professional physicians’ organizations, along with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, sued on the grounds that the law — a “physician gag law,” the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) called it — violated doctors’ freedom of speech. On Wednesday, a federal judge in Miami agreed and temporarily blocked the law. It seems likely that the decision will become permanent.
“Despite the State’s insistence that the right to ‘keep arms’ is the primary constitutional right at issue in this litigation, a plain reading of the statute reveals that this law in no way affects such rights,” wrote U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke. “A practitioner who counsels a patient on firearm safety, even when entirely irrelevant to medical care or safety, does not affect nor interfere with the patient’s right to continue to own, possess, or use firearms.”
Florida’s Republican-controlled state legislature, with support from Gov. Rick Scott, had argued that it was a violation of privacy for pediatricians to ask parents if they kept guns in their home. Noting that the law relied on anecdotal evidence and not research or statistics, Judge Cooke wrote in the ruling [PDF] that “information regarding firearm ownership is not sacrosanct.”
“The law was crazy,” says Louis St. Petery, a pediatric cardiologist in Tallahassee and executive vice president of the Florida Pediatric Society. “The NRA [National Rifle Association] argued that we were out to rid the state of firearms, but that’s a distortion. Our issues as pediatricians are all about safety.”
Which is why pediatricians have to be so nosy. They ask all sorts of personal questions, delving into family diets and discipline and urging caution around swimming pools and street crossings. They remind parents to make their kids wear helmets when biking and stay in booster seats even when big kids complain they’re too babyish. They also ask whether parents keep guns at home and whether they’re stored safely — with the ammunition and the firearm kept separately in locked cabinets, the key tucked away from children.
the same Time magazine article noted:
"U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 200,000 homes in Florida have improperly stored weapons. "...and...."eight U.S. children die of gunshot wounds each day"
What penalty did Florida try to impose for just ASKING about firearms in homes?
continuing from the Times magazine article:
"...[Republican lawmakers]  initially recommended a five-year prison sentence and $5 million fine for offending doctors. They eventually settled on potential loss of a doctor’s medical license and up to a $10,000 fine, while allowing for exceptional situations that could warrant physician questioning, such as a suicidal teen."
Given this event in gun-crazy Florida, getting answers to questions about firearms in day care providing homes seems to me to be a pretty fair and reasonable parental right.  I'd bet that trying to make that a legal right as a condition of doing business would be shut down hard by our current right wing extremist majority, ALEC owned, NRA run  legislature here in Minnesota too.

I have a problem with people who are providing a service - child care - NOT being required to reveal an important safety aspect about their premises that could be of significant concern to a parent contracting with them for child care.   I'm not suggesting all clients would want to take their kids elsewhere if there were firearms in the home; some of those parents may own or even carry firearms themselves, including parents who are in law enforcement.
But the opportunity to ask how the firearms are secured, for their child's safety and their own peace of mind seems a fair premise for doing business.  People who lawfully own firearms - and I would include providing documentation by child care providers to parents that those firearms are owned and were acquired legally - should be allowed to do so, in the context of full and fair disclosure.  It's not like firearms and children aren't a problem in this country - there is a HUGE problem.

We have, per the CDC, the highest rate of children killed by firearms in comparison to the 25 other countries considered comparable economically and developmentally.

As of 2008, the American Academy of Childhood and Adolescent Psychiatry noted:
Children and Guns

Adopted by Council on October 28, 2000 Updated May, 2008To be reivewed May, 2013
Children and adolescents have easy access to guns. Over 5% of high school students indicated that they carried a gun in the past month, and it is estimated that approximately one million children bring guns to school each year. Many students who carry guns do so because they are afraid or influenced by peer pressure.
The United States has the highest rates of firearm-related deaths among industrialized countries, including homicide, suicide and unintentional deaths; young people are often the victims. Gun violence accounts for over 3,000 deaths and over 15,000 injuries each year among children and adolescents. The rate of firearm-related homicides for U.S. children younger than 15 years of age is nearly 16 times greater than the rates in 25 other industrialized countries combined.
And the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, on their web page notes:

Where and when:

  • Most unintentional firearm-related deaths among children occur in or around the home; 50 percent at the home of the victim, and 40 percent at the home of a friend or relative.
  • The presence of a firearm in the home increases the risk of unintentional firearm-related death among children (especially if the firearm is loaded and kept unlocked).
  • Most unintentional firearm-related child deaths involve guns that were loaded and accessible, and occur when children play with the gun.
  • More than one-half of firearm owners keep their firearms loaded and ready for use some of the time.
  • Most unintentional shootings among children occur in the late afternoon, on the weekend, during summer months, and during the holiday season, when children are most likely to be unsupervised.
  • Rural areas have higher incidences of unintentional firearm-related injuries, as well as higher rates of firearm ownership.

Who:

  • Approximately 3.3 million children in the US live in households with firearms that are, at times, kept loaded and unlocked.
  • Boys are more likely to suffer unintentional firearm-injuries or die from an unintentional shooting than girls. Nearly 80 percent of children ages 14 and under who die from unintentional shootings are boys.
  • As many as 75 percent to 80 percent of first and second graders know where their parents' gun is kept.
  • Some 3-year-olds are strong enough to pull the trigger of many handguns.

With that background, read this from the STrib:

Child-care providers can keep guns in home

  • Article by: BRAD SCHRADE and JEREMY , O LSON
  • Updated: July 14, 2012 - 10:19 PM
Laws limit accessibility, but the penalties are uneven.
The tally is another measure of the regulatory gap in Minnesota between home-based and center-based care.
At a home in Bloomington last June, for example, children witnessed a relative of the provider wield a gun during a violent argument; a St. Paul day care provider pulled a gun in 2008 and threatened a person at her home; a child at a Duluth home reportedly used a gun in 2006 to make threats toward another child.

At Minnesota's 1,500 licensed child-care centers, guns are banned. Violators can face felony prosecution, with up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The last known gun incident at center-based care occurred in 2004, according to the state Department of Human Services (DHS).
At home-based day care, by contrast, guns are restricted during business hours and must be unloaded and locked away. Penalties are uneven. Some providers who leave guns accessible in their homes are given correction orders but no fines.

In addition, parents who depend on licensed in-home providers are often in the dark about the presence of firearms because state law does not require providers to disclose whether they have guns in their homes.

"There are people who ... very strongly defend that right to have a gun in their home," said DHS Inspector General Jerry Kerber. "From our perspective, if they are going to have a gun in their home while they are providing child care, they absolutely must do it in a safe manner."
Several incidents uncovered by a Star Tribune investigation involved family members or acquaintances of the day care provider. In a 2008 incident at a Lakeville home, someone living at the provider's home set off an improvised explosive device that partially tore off two of the person's fingers. When police arrived at the home after the 4 a.m. blast, they discovered bomb-making materials and a shotgun.

Many of the violations involve providers who leave guns accessible to children. In 2010, a day care provider in Hector, Minn., left a gun propped against the wall of a bedroom where children slept. A provider in a Bloomington home was cited in 2008 and again in 2010 for leaving guns accessible to children in her garage.

Three states -- Michigan, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania -- require in-home providers to notify parents if there are guns in the house, according to a 2008 study by the National Association for Regulatory Administration.

Kerber said his agency will review Minnesota's disclosure policies after questions were raised by the Star Tribune.

Staff writer Glenn Howatt contributed to this story.

4 comments:

  1. I have an off-the-wall crazy idea. Rather than 'inviting' government to intervene in our lives more (don't we have enough of that?), how about parents do a proper job when selecting a daycare provider? My wife has provided daycare services in our home for 16 years and to her recollection she has never fielded one question about guns in the home.
    It never ceases to amaze me how people can always find problems to solve, but then always seem to look to government to solve them rather than take a proactive approach on their own.

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  2. I would like to add that I do not agree with the gag law that was overturned by the Federal court. I don't think outlawing questions is good law. I would suggest to parents that don't want to discuss their guns with a pediatrician simply refuse to answer those questions and remind a persistent pediatrician who the customer is.
    As to the 'interpretation' of the 14th amendment to the US Constitution to mean that 'some' of the first ten amendments are some how 'incorporated' to the States (and other governmental jurisdictions) - that's ridiculous. The first amendment prohibits CONGRESS from passing laws to prevent free speech, not State legislatures. Since the first amendment was ratified by the States and NO subsequent amendments changed this, the US Federal court that ruled on this law had no legal standing to hear the case. Madison argued for a power to negative State law to be included in the US Constitution at least a half dozen times and was thoroughly defeated on this idea. That is why you don't see this power listed in the Constitution. No 'Supreme' can simply 'find' this power at a later date.

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    1. If you'd ever read about Gitlow v New York (1925) or the many Supreme court cases which have followed, you would realize that States are losing the ability to selectively incorporate the Bill of Rights, and rightly so. The most recent is with regards to the 2nd Amendment, which is McDonald v Chicago (2010). States have in the past disparaged against many constitutional rights in the past, often with horrific results (it was State mobilization of National Guard that caused Kent State, many States participated in violent strike-breaking tactics during the industrial revolution, and even more used selective incorporation to deny the rights of being treated equal to the same people who now seem to want to champion the return to those dark days in our past, only with themselves on top of the heap now.

      Madison argued to negate State power in policy making for the practices of legislation with regards to treaties, and financial outlay of the federal powers, not the address of individual rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, a document which he was actually one of the chief opponents of when it came to ratification. Incidentally, he was also one of the chief proponents of the first National Bank, which when it was propped up, became a haven for corrupt speculators seeking economic favor through political policy. In other words, he and his cronies made themselves rich off the backs of the people who actually built this country's foundations (you can read about the games they played in John Kenneth Galbraith's "A History of Economics" in which, in order to keep their game afoot, they would rush gold from the banks auditors had just finished inspecting to the banks they were inspecting next in order to inflate the numbers and hide their skim).

      Your argument is as flawed as the moron who wrote this blog and thought it would be cute to photoshop guns into the hands of babies. Is it wrong for day care providers to leave guns accessible to children? Yes, very much so. But don't presume that the rest of the gun-owning population is irresponsible or in need of regulation because of a few morons.

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  3. Joe Schmoe, welcome to penigma.

    To respond to your first comment, and in some respects to the second, both the pediatricians interest and the interest of the government - different levels of it - in regulating secure storage of firearms in daycare centers, both are more appropriate than anything passed in the last two years by Republicans that are more intrusive.

    We have, as this post noted, more children killed and more children injured by firearms than all the other developed and industrialized countries COMBINED, several times over.

    Therefore we have a public health problem with firearms.

    It's a simple numbers issue. The responsibility of the doctor is to the patient, in this case the child, not the adult's convenience. Due to the public health issues it is appropriate for pediatricians to ask and require an answer from parents. If parents are responsible, why would they have a problem disucssing this anyway? It's no different than any other topic that a pediatrician brings up, like sun protection, or other household hazards. You see the pediatrician as the enemy; they're not. The reality is, lots of people are NOT responsible with firearms - or children. It's no different than a OB/GYN talking with a woman about prenatal vitamins, and the risks of alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, or other drugs to her fetus, only later.

    Now if you can show me where per capita we don't have deaths and injuries to children on a massive level, then you might have honest grounds to object, because it wouldn't have become a problem. Now we have an epic fail of our gun culture; or do you not mind that we have an appalling and preventable number of deaths and injuries to children that other countries just don't have, while being every bit as free?

    Free is not dangerous or lawless Joe.

    I'm not sure what you mean by 'to negative state law' - negative is not a verb. Do you mean nullify?

    That sir was settled definitively back in 1832.

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