Rachel Alexander writing for Townhall issues a warning.

… the NRA stepped in and got some of the worst language revised last December. Senate amendment 3276, Sec. 2716, part c. prohibits the creation of a firearms database and stops doctors from disclosing or collecting information relating to a patient’s firearms. Ironically, this provision was probably the only positive result of most members of Congress not bothering to read the bill before voting on it.

However, the provision does not go as far as prohibiting doctors from asking their patients if there are any firearms in their home. In January, Obama issued 23 executive actions and orders regarding firearms. Order 16 stressed that Obamacare does not prohibit doctors from asking patients about their firearms, and the fact sheet includes, “Clarify that no federal law prevents health care providers from warning law enforcement authorities about threats of violence.” What constitutes a “threat of violence” could be very arbitrary. This puts doctors in a difficult position by suggesting they act as pseudo-law enforcement agents. It is damaging to doctor-patient privilege. If doctors have a patient with PTSD or mental illness, and they fail to ask the patient about their firearms, or report them to law enforcement, they could be on the hook later. It encourages them to err on the side of snooping into their patients’ guns. This is especially troubling considered the definition of mental illness keeps expanding.

In Guns And The Mentally Ill: A Professional Assessment, I noted yet again that the mental health profession couldn’t possibly sustain the load of predicting violent behavior and that mental health maladies have no particular association with propensity to violence.

Yet mental health continues to be the whipping boy du jour of the gun control fanatics, which led my commenter and former member of the military Will to comment:

I absolutely regret seeking care from the VA for PTSD for just this reason.

I’m so sorry.  I am so very sorry to the members of the military who have seen combat, earned the combat action ribbon (or Army equivalent), or who have sought care for PTSD.

For those who thought we had their backs, I’m so sorry that the country let you down by sending you to fight in a war with obscene rules of engagement that caused you danger, sent you to fight without enough troops, and now places you at risk upon return to lose your right to own weapons.

America will answer for its sins one day in time, and then in eternity.