Should guns be banned in hospitals?

[spin]

14. In Florida in order to legally carry a firearm in a hospital you would have to have...

a concealed weapons permit. To get a concealed weapons permit you have to provide proof of training, be fingerprinted and have a background check.

Florida has had "shall issue" concealed carry since 1987. In that period of time the state has issued 2,109,184 permits. Currently there are 887,405 valid concealed carry permits.

In that 24 year period of time only 168 permits have been revoked because of the commission on a crime that involved the use of a firearm.

(source of data: http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/stats/cw_monthly.pdf)

I may be wrong but I can't remember one criminal shooting in a hospital that was the fault of an individual with a carry permit.

On the other hand I remember that a nurse asked me to introduce her to shooting handguns. She was concerned about the amount of violence that had occurred in the parking lot of a hospital she worked at and was interested in obtaining a concealed weapons permit in order to carry a firearm for self defense.

A person who wishes to shoot up a hospital or to attack workers in the parking lot will have little concern about a law that makes hospitals a gun free zone. The result of such a law might well result in far more damage then it would prevent.

Patient attacks on doctors and nurses are more frequent

It’s somewhat of a hidden phenomenon, but attacks on doctors and nurses are on the rise.

Rahul Parikh writes about this in a recent Slate piece. He cites data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which found “health care workers are twice as likely as those in other fields to experience an injury from a violent act at work, with nurses being the most common victims.”

***snip***

Much of teaching on how to avoid potentially violent situations are ineffective in the long term. That leads to more extreme solutions — like carrying a gun.

Indeed, according to a survey conducted in 2005, 40 percent of emergency physicians admitted to carrying a gun. That seems like an incredibly high number to me....emphasis added
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/04/patient-attacks-doctors-nurses-frequent.html