I know we're all busy talking about the border and the economy and the wars overseas,

but the Libs over at the Atlantic are celebrating a new frontier in public policy,

largely unnoticed, and that is prescribing away your

Second Amendment rights. Here's the headline. The doctor will ask about

your gun now. Just a paragraph or two. A man comes to

Northwell Health's Hospital on Staten Island with a sprained ankle. Any

allergies the doctor asks,

how many alcoholic drinks do you have each week?

Do you have access to firearms inside or outside the home?

When the patient answers yes to that last question,

someone from his care team explains that locking

up the firearm can make his home safer. She, of course it's a she, offers him a gunlock

and a pamphlet with information on secure storage and firearm safety classes.

And all of this happens during the visit about his ankle.

Northwell Health is part of a growing movement of health care providers that want to talk

with patients about guns like they would diet, exercise or sex, treating firearm injury as a public health issue.

In the past few years, the White House has declared firearm injury, an epidemic and the

CDC and the National Institutes of Health have begun offering grants for

prevention research.

Meanwhile, dozens of medical societies agree that gun injury is a public health crisis and that health care providers

have to help stop it. As they say, this policy has been building for some time,

largely unnoticed.

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