0917_Viewpoint:Evers_On_Constitutional

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Viewpoint: Evers: On Constitutional Rights, I am Right

Pensacola News Journal - September 17, 2011

Contrary to the PNJ's assertion, I fully understand the importance of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, perhaps more than the PNJ editors themselves ("Evers missed the target," Sept. 16). I know that were it not for the Second Amendment, there would be no means to protect the First Amendment or the entire Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights, including First Amendment rights, Second Amendment rights and the right of an individual's personal privacy are interrelated and inextricably intertwined.

Federal Judge Marcia Cooke is the one with a fundamental misunderstanding of what this law actually does. The law does not bar physicians from discussing gun safety with their patients. The law does not bar physicians from inquiring as to whether or not patients have guns, provided that the physician does so in a "good faith" belief that the inquiry is necessary for patient treatment or in the course and scope of an emergency situation involving, or potentially involving, a firearm.

What the bill actually does — a point completely missed by Judge Cook — is protect a patient or the parent of a patient from a bad faith or unnecessary inquisition into whether the patient or parent owns guns. Doctors regularly refuse treatment based on whether or not the patient or parent is willing or unwilling to answer that question.

To suggest doctors need to be able to ask anything they wish for the purpose of identifying and treating a disease, as Judge Cook did in her opinion, seems to infer or conclude that she considers the exercise of the Second Amendment itself to be a disease.

That is not only appalling, but it is shocking.

The First Amendment gives doctors the right to speak to patients, not interrogate patients and violate their privacy rights. The law does not interfere with doctors who choose to counsel patients with safety messages concerning swimming pool safety, seat belt use, safe practices concerning poisonous household products or prescription medications, and firearm safety.

But no doctor needs to know what products you own in order to provide you with safety information concerning products that your child may encounter in your own home, or more importantly, the home of another.

The First Amendment allows the editors of the PNJ to speak their minds and allows me to speak mine in disagreement. But equally as important as understanding the First Amendment is understanding the Second Amendment, which I assure you I do and will continue to stand up for.

Greg Evers represents District 2 in the Florida Senate.