If you’re a primary care provider and you’re doing a routine exam, it's common to ask whether somebody in the house owns a gun—and, if so, to discuss firearm safety. Several major medical societies actually recommend it, for very good reason. Studies have shown that access to firearms in the home is associated with an increased risk of suicide and being the victim of a homicide.

A few years ago, conservatives in the Florida legislature decided they knew better. With strong support from the National Rifle Association, they passed a law making it illegal for physicians to ask about gun ownership. The “Docs v. Glocks” law was controversial from the start. Physician groups, including the American Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatrics, opposed it strongly and, when they sued, a federal judge agreed with them, declaring the law invalid. But the State of Florida appealed and, this week, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the lower court. Asking about a gun in the home, the judges said, is not “good medicine: and amounts to “interrogation about irrelevant, private matters.”

The judges were half-right. Doctors who ask about gun ownership are asking about private matters. But that is what doctors do. I’m an obstetrician/gynecologist. When a patient comes in for an exam, I take a thorough medical history that gets very personal, very quickly. Are you sexually active? Do you use birth control and, if so, what kind? Do you have multiple partners? I need that information to help with decisions on family planning, as well as to screen for (or treat) conditions ranging from sexually transmitted diseases to certain kinds of cancer.

I also ask about smoking, drinking, and use of drugs. Again, those are invasive, private questions. But the answers affect decision-making about what kinds of tests to run—and whether to be on the lookout for conditions like lung cancer or liver disease. And that’s just the obvious stuff. Answers to those questions could also affect our decisions about prescriptions, for example.

But maybe the best analogy is seatbelts. There are about as many motor vehicle deaths as there are gun deaths each year in US. (By 2015, gun deaths for people under 25 is expected to surpass motor vehicle deaths.) Physicians ask about this too. Nobody thinks it's intrusive. When we ask these questions, the message isn’t don't drive. It’s drive safely. The same goes for alcohol. We’re not saying it’s evil. We just want you to drink responsibly. When we doctors ask about guns we aren't saying don't own them, we are saying own them responsibly. Why? Our only agenda is that we want you to be healthy.