Gatekeeper. (from: vapartners.ca)
Every state has its own laws regulating gun ownership. These exist in addition to the complex and morphing web of federal laws and regulations gun owners must be aware of.
As Americans become more familiar with firearms and more comfortable with their widespread ownership, they have relaxed some of the more onerous laws, state by state. Such deliberations are ongoing in many states, and one is North Carolina. (NOTE: Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership neither supports nor opposes any specific legislation.)
North Carolina law strongly regulates handgun ownership at the county level. It requires permission from one’s county sheriff to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon or even to acquire a handgun. Controversy arose after the Newtown school murders when two North Carolina family doctors questioned their statutory role in the permit approval process. Although the North Carolina law was in place for years before Newtown, events have converged to make doctors in that state more aware of the burden that this law places on them.
Another North Carolina doctor provided me with a copy of the form letter sent from the Durham County sheriff’s office as part of a concealed carry permit application submitted by one of the doctor’s patients. It requests that the doctor state in writing whether that doctor’s patient “does or does not have any Medical or Physical Condition that would restrict the individual from being issued a Concealed License” [sic].
All of these doctors, and presumably many others, point out that they are unqualified by training or experience to make such a judgment. Apart from the ethical and political issues swirling around any participation of doctors in the licensing process, there is wide consensus in the medical community that even experts such as psychiatrists cannot reliably predict violent behavior. And the potential for such violent behavior is the chief concern of licensing authorities (this is much more clearly spelled out in North Carolina Firearms Laws, from the state Attorney General’s website).
North Carolina doctors find themselves pulled into an unwanted and professionally perilous role of certifying safe behavior. The law fails to afford them the protection from liability that it affords members of the law enforcement structure—police, judges, and attorneys.
Doctors already have too many ways to get into legal trouble. They spend much of their energy not tending to their patients’ illnesses, but trying to avoid the legal traps their patients (the citizens of North Carolina) set for them, knowingly or not.
And all this assumes that all doctors would respect their patients’ civil rights and not use their power to effectively deny a license because of any personal animus against gun ownership. Unfortunately, many doctors have revealed such prejudice. No doctor should be allowed that power, but North Carolina law offers it on a platter to the unscrupulous doctors who would abuse it.
A further obstacle to law-abiding North Carolinians who want to carry a firearm for self-defense is the policy, justified under state law, requiring release of medical records to the sheriff. The Durham County sheriff’s policy requires the release of “any and all” records “concerning physical capacity, mental health, mental capacity, or substance abuse” to its office as a condition of the application. Listed in the notarized consent document are major hospitals in the county, with permission specified from the applicant for a sweeping disclosure of all such records from the named institutions.
But astonishingly, the information gleaned from these records is not reviewed by a psychiatrist, a medical doctor, or any other health professional. The medical, psychiatric, and substance abuse professional care records are reviewed by a Durham County sheriff’s deputy (personal communication from the Durham County Sheriff’s office).
It is reasonable to ask what sound, science-based reasons the North Carolina legislature or the Durham County sheriff have for demanding such sensitive and closely protected health information from an average applicant. And what would be their reason for depending on a deputy’s review of those highly technical records when even psychiatrists are not able to predict with certainty whether a person will commit violence? Presumably the department’s accompanying request for a doctor’s blanket certification (see above) is an attempt to deal with this problem, but it fails for the reasons mentioned above.
Meanwhile, a new trend is taking hold in the states, designed to avoid the traps, uncertainties, and potential civil rights infringements inherent in such systems as North Carolina’s. Constitutional carry (i.e., no license required for law-abiding citizens to carry a firearm concealed) is now the law in six states, none of which have reported increases in crime after enactment of their laws. It’s only a matter of time before other states follow their example, much the same as one state after another adopted right to carry laws. Among the benefits for North Carolinians in adopting constitutional carry would be freeing their doctors from the impossible burden of medical judgments about who is or isn’t qualified to exercise their natural right of self-defense.
—Timothy Wheeler, MD is director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a project of the Second Amendment Foundation.