The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has embarked on a strident campaign against gun ownership.

In an article appearing last year in the Medical Sentinel published by the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Timothy Wheeler explained what the AAP is fostering among its members. (Medical Sentinel’s web site is www.haciendapub.com. The editor, Miguel Faria, has run several pro-gun articles over the years.)

The AAP is urging each of its member pediatricians to pry into the private lives of their patients and ask if they have guns in the home.

The pediatrician is urged to push on their patients the “gun safety instruction” patient materials the AAP adopted from Handgun Control, Inc. Since 76 percent of the pediatricians responding to an AAP survey support a ban on handguns, many parents are likely to encounter one of these physicians with their disarming manners.

Dr. Wheeler explains that this prying behavior is a boundary violation the same as doctor-patient sex. In other words, it is a violation of physician ethics.

That means that there is something you can do about such a doctor (besides walking out immediately). An aggrieved patient can go to the Yellow Pages and find the phone number of the state Medical Society and file a complaint.

The doctor may be exonerated, but it may also reduce his ardor to confuse medicine with propaganda. And if several patients file complaints, the number alone could endanger his license to practice.

Keep in mind that the AAP is involved in a shameless exercise of blame shifting. Physicians kill, according to the Harvard Medical School, 96,000 patients a year through malpractice. We are nine times as likely to be killed by our doctor than someone murdering us with a gun.

Spread the word to parents who have children under the care of pediatricians.

From Washington, this is Larry Pratt for Gun Owners of America.