If your doctor asks you about guns in your home, do you have to answer? If you believe the question is pertinent to your treatment, you may choose to answer it. A doctor cannot compel you to answer the question, and if a doctor chooses to turn you away for your refusal to answer the question, choose another doctor. You can listen to my interview with Austin Hill of KINF on this topic here.
Although Pres. Obama has made comments about the importance of determining if guns are “in the wrong hands”, the 2010 Affordable Care Act actually included language meant to protect Second Amendment rights. The government cannot require that information regarding gun ownership be disclosed, and gun ownership cannot be used to determine insurance premium rates. You can read more about it here.
In fact, our current laws prohibit the government from collecting data about gun owners unless government officials are investigating criminal activity and navigate through the appropriate avenues to obtain the information they seek.
The same law that instituted federal regulation of retail firearms sales in the United States, and which law requires dealers to keep records of all firearms made, imported, acquired or disposed of, also protects individual gun owners. This law is the Gun Control Act of 1968, and one of the central Congressional compromises in passing the Act was that the collected gun ownership records would be kept by the dealers, not by the federal, state, or local governments. A subsequent federal law, the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act of 1986, expanded the protection to individual gun owners by preventing any governmental body from passing a rule or regulation that would “require centralization of federally mandated dealer records, or require establishment of any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or disposition.”
So for now, absent the abuse of power by our intelligence agencies, our laws are protective of gun owners and prevent a government created firearms registry. Of course, there are lawmakers who would prefer to change these laws. It is your duty as a citizen to be informed, watch the proposals, and actively participate to prevent any such laws from being passed in the future. For now, guard your personal information and be aware that you are not required to disclose that personal information just because someone asks you a question.