The Act seeks to protect patients' privacy by restricting irrelevant inquiryand record-keeping by physicians regarding firearms. The Act recognizes that when a patient enters a physician's examination room, the patient is in a position of relative powerlessness. The patient must place his or her trust in the physician's guidance, and submit to the physician's authority. In order to protect patients, physicians have for millennia been subject to codes of conduct that define the practice of good medicine and affirm the responsibility physicians bear. In keeping with these traditional codes of conduct—which almost universally mandate respect for patient privacy—the Act simply acknowledges that the practice of good medicine does not require interrogation about irrelevant, private matters.
