We did some post-Christmas shopping at WAL*MART® to get our present to each other, this new 42-inch HDTV. We waited for the after-holiday sale prices to kick in. It sure looks good with “Pirates of the Caribbean – At World’s End” playing on the screen.
Last night, I finished wrapping up Christmas presents for our extended family. I always see to it that each of the kids get something from us.
This afternoon, we ventured out into holiday traffic to drop the gifts off with my sister. When we got there, the newest family member, Drake, was in a visiting mood.
Drake’s six months old now, and this will be his first Christmas. His brother, Jayden, was also there happily getting a blue tongue from a blueberry candy cane I brought.
Bad news with a couple of computers this week. The laptop lost it’s hard drive and the old workstation on my desk had a power supply failure. When it rains it pours. We’re trying to recover from the double crash, but it might take some time.
Meanwhile, check out this short video about Verna’s newest favorite hobby.
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I generally don’t post political things here unless they’re really funny or outrageously mind-boggling. This is a case of the latter.
Certain pediatricians now employ the practice of asking kids if “Daddy has a gun,” and, if the answer is “yes,” they follow-up with questions about weapons in the home – legitimate or not. I infer from this that they must think children with gun-owning parents have some sort of health risk.
A recent case in Massachusetts involved a mom and her five-year-old in for a check-up. The doctor asked about guns, and since there was a legally-owned gun in the household, he followed up by filing a police report. Didn’t they do this in Germany when the Nazis were in charge?
Let’s consider some numbers:
In the U.S. in 2003, there were 28 accidental gunshot deaths among 10 year old or younger children. There were an estimated 90 million gun owners and about 277 million guns nationwide at that time. There also were 40 million (or so) kids under the age of 10 in 2003. So actually a small percentage of children were killed or about 0.00007 percent (1 child for every 1.4 million) – still way too many, but a small percentage. This also translates that only one gun out of every 100 million guns was involved in the death of a child that year.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1400 kids are killed yearly by automobile accidents, either as passengers or as pedestrians. Why not ask if Daddy owns a car? 90 kids are drowned in bathtubs annually – should we put locks on tubs? Space heaters, swimming pools, bicycles, toxic cleaning agents, skateboards and a host of other common articles are factors in child fatalities. When you add all these “health” risks together, the health risk of a gun in the household is not only dwarfed, but practically eliminated. Why not ask about other known-to-be-dangerous items?
Kids are not so much at risk from guns as they are from parents with habitual substance abuse, violent criminal records, domestic violence and such. Pediatricians should zero in on whether children have parents who are people who would use guns violently, not if “Daddy has a gun.”
Of course anti-gun fanatics and leftists are arithmetically challenged, preferring hyperbole to statistics. Crusading for children, it seems, is a favorite ploy by the left, except when it comes to crusading for abortion wherein children are intentionally killed for the sake of “health” or “convenience.”
Interview your health professionals (after all, they work for you) and see if they have an anti-gun agenda – if they do, FIRE THEM!
And OBTW (oh, by the way) if the country goes to a national health care system, certain anti-gun politicians (Hillary!) will assign a health professional(?) to you – you will have NO choice in the matter, since free trade and competition are the enemies of socialism.
Well, maybe not. It would have been far better for her name to pop up on a Ford, GM or Chrysler product.
As of this writing, I can not recall seeing one of these on the road. But I’ll be looking . . .
