In Florida, it's against the law to carry a gun into a school, an athletic event, a jail, a police station or a local government meeting It remains perfectly legal to pack heat in a hospital, says the Miami Herald. For years, Linda Quick of the South Florida Hospital and Healthcare Association has wanted to change that. The agenda item is again on the association's list as the 2012 legislative session gets under way. “It's just common sense,” says Quick. “You don't want guns in schools. Why on earth would you want them in hospitals?”
Fat chance, says Marion Hammer, the lobbyist for the National Rifle Association who has fought successfully for years against adding hospitals to the list. “NRA would oppose a bill that panders to the anti-gun political agenda of South Florida organizations,'' she told the Herald. The legislature's trend has been decidedly pro-gun. Last year, all the talk about guns and healthcare involved an NRA-backed bill that said doctors should refrain from asking patients whether they had firearms unless the doctors had a compelling reason. The legislature passed the bill. Gov. Rick Scott signed it. Physicians led the charge against it — maintaining they had a constitutional right to ask and a need to know whether children were in a safe household that either had no guns or the guns were locked away. A federal judge has blocked the law until she can determine whether it violates doctors' free speech rights.