An "agenda" in everything?

Throughout most of the current political debate about the national debt, I regularly found myself wondering why it has become so difficult to get opposing sides to accept (or even consider) good data.  That is, the agenda in play trumps everything and everybody is forced to defer to the agenda (or opt out of the debate).  Now, this isn't a new phenomenon, but it seems to me to have become pervasive in the last few years.

So I read with interest (and, unfortunately, no surprise) this column (see here) in the New York Times about the Florida law that prevents doctors from asking patients if they have a gun in the home.  The essay is written by a physician and he states that:

At the moment, however, those of us working in a clinic or hospital will have to imagine we live in a place where gun injuries aren’t a public health issue and forget some of the questions we learned to ask in medical school. In doctors’ offices in Florida, prevention has its limits.

Now, why would someone object to a physician asking about the presence of guns in a house with kids?  Well, proponents of the law argued that it was a violation of their rights and none of the physician's business.  And why would physicians asks such questions?  The same reason they ask about the presence of swimming pools and the use of seat belts.  They know what the data shows (see below, click to enlarge).

So, in the interest of prevention and safety and being aware of the data, physicians ask questions that are OK as long as they don't conflict with some agenda (that currently has political power).  Could we be living in an age of smart phones and stupid people?